Demo Day Profile: Echolotzentrum Schlageter

Cody Warner | September 17th, 2015

Deep Trekker is proud to have dozens of partners around the globe, with ROVs in 60 different nations worldwide. With an upcoming joint search and rescue demonstration with our German reseller Echolotzentrum Schlageter and local Halton Police's Marine & Canine unit, we wanted to share the story of Thomas Schlageter, the co-founder of Echolotzentrum Schlageter.

The beginning of Thomas Schlageter's extraordinary career as a sonar expert was unfortunately a tragic accident to one of his closest friends. In the late nineties, his friend drowned in a lake during the attempt to take a shortcut home.

The police tried to find the missing man in the lake for several days. The police had limited resources and access to technology. After two weeks of intense but unsuccessful search, the police had to give up and left a devastated widow behind.

Every year in Germany, there are hundreds of these kinds of drowning accidents (Schlageter 2015). Schlageter, a fishing equipment dealer at the time of the accident, decided to use his underwater sound navigation expertise originally used for fishing to find his friend. Within a few scans using his Sonar equipment, he was able to locate his friend and provide closure for his friend's wife.

This was the beginning of hundreds of further experiments and an unparalleled development in the use of sonar devices for the search and recovery of missing people and objects of all kind.

Now partnered together with Oliver Beerhenke, a well experienced instructor for technical professions, they developed an extensive training concept. Today, Thomas and Oliver are viewed among the brightest minds in Sonar Search and Recovery in all of Europe.

In 2012, they founded the Sonar Academy Germany and invented many different models of a special underwater sonar doll that provide the most realistic scenarios possible for training the water recovery students.

Water rescue teams, Police departments, firefighters, rescue scuba diver units – they all trust the intense experience of sonar search technology of Echolotzentrum Schlageter's Sonar Academy Germany. We are pleased to host Thomas and share his knowledge!

Sign up to join us free of charge at Bronte Harbour in Halton on October 2nd for a unique learning opportunity from the best in the business!