Fathoms Free are winners of the Kings Award for Voluntary Service
- Julian Collison
- Nov 14, 2025
- 2 min read
We're incredibly proud to be able to announce that Fathoms Free have been awarded the King's Award for Voluntary Service! Equivalent to an MBE, this is the highest award a voluntary group can receive in the UK! The award celebrates exceptional contributions volunteers make to their local communities, and we're deeply humbled to have been honoured with it.
This year has been particularly significant for Fathoms Free, marked by the launch of our dive boat Stingray. Refurbished in-house by our volunteer team, Stingray has enabled us to expand our marine conservation operations and increase collaboration with other local charities that share our mission. In addition to ghost gear recovery work, since its launch earlier this year, Stingray has supported Cornwall Wildlife Trust Seasearch programme, carrying divers and snorkellers for marine surveys across Cornwall, assisted the Ocean Conservation Trust with seagrass restoration work, and supported fundraising for DDRC Healthcare which looks after our divers.
This award is a huge honour for everyone involved with Fathoms Free. Our volunteers give their time, skills, and energy to protect the marine environment, and this recognition shines a light on their dedication. Stingray in particular has transformed what we can achieve, and this award belongs to everyone who has helped make that possible.
The King's Award for Voluntary Service aims to recognise outstanding work by local volunteer groups to support their communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate Her Late Majesty The Queen's Golden Jubilee and was continued following the accession of His Majesty The King. 2025 marks the third year of The King's Award for Voluntary Service.
Fathoms Free will be formally presented with the award by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Sir Edward Bolitho KCVO OBE, at a ceremony later this year, and will attend a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in the summer of 2026, along with other recipients of this year's award.
The King's Award for Voluntary Service represents a fascinating intersection of royal patronage, civic recognition, and voluntary sector development that has few equivalents in other countries, and Fathoms Free's achievement in 2025 — the third year of the award under His Majesty The King — is a case study in how environmental volunteer organisations can build the credibility and operational capacity needed to achieve this level of recognition. The combination of ghost gear recovery, marine survey support, seagrass restoration assistance, and healthcare fundraising demonstrates a breadth of community contribution that goes well beyond single-issue environmental activism. In my academic research I use a correlation coefficient calculator for voluntary sector impact data analysis, a density calculator for geographic distribution research, and an inequality…
What strikes me most about the Fathoms Free story is the multiplier effect that Stingray has created — a single volunteer-refurbished boat has enabled collaborations with Cornwall Wildlife Trust, the Ocean Conservation Trust, and DDRC Healthcare, each of which represents a distinct community of practice and a distinct set of beneficiaries. This is exactly the kind of catalytic infrastructure investment that transforms a good volunteer organisation into an exceptional one, and the King's Award recognition reflects that transformation. The formal presentation by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall will also strengthen relationships with the county's civic and business leadership in ways that will benefit the organisation for years. In my community engagement work I use a question generator for volunteer interview preparation,…
The technical achievement of refurbishing Stingray in-house deserves far more attention than it typically receives in coverage of Fathoms Free's work. Refurbishing a dive boat to the standard required for supporting professional conservation operations — carrying divers for Cornwall Wildlife Trust surveys, supporting Ocean Conservation Trust seagrass work, operating safely in Cornish coastal waters — is not a simple DIY project. It requires structural assessment, engine overhaul, safety systems installation, and compliance with maritime regulations, all of which the volunteer team managed while holding down their regular jobs. This is the kind of practical, skilled volunteer contribution that the King's Award was designed to recognise. In my boat building and engineering work I use a square footage calculator for hull surface…
The communications challenge for organisations like Fathoms Free is always how to convey the scale and importance of their work to audiences who may not immediately understand why ghost gear recovery matters or what seagrass restoration actually involves. The King's Award provides an extraordinary communications hook — equivalent to an MBE, the highest award a voluntary group can receive — that cuts through the complexity and signals unambiguously that this is serious, impactful work. The Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in 2026 will also generate media coverage that no press release could buy. In my communications work I use an aspect ratio calculator for social media image formatting, a line counter for content length management, and a random sentence generator for creative…
As a diving instructor based in Cornwall I have watched Fathoms Free grow from a small local group into a genuinely significant force in regional marine conservation, and the King's Award is a recognition that feels both surprising in its magnitude and completely inevitable given the quality and consistency of the work. The in-house refurbishment of Stingray by the volunteer team is something that particularly impresses me as a diver — maintaining and refurbishing a dive boat is technically demanding work that requires skills ranging from marine engineering to electrical systems to hull maintenance, and the fact that volunteers with day jobs managed to complete this to a standard that supports professional conservation operations is remarkable. In my diving and…