Re your mushroom scrumpers at Thorney, I seem to remember that at Chivenor some time in the sixties the SAR Flight had their own lobster pots in the Taw estuary. A relatively easy way to harvest the sea, but the local fishermen resented this and as many of them were RNLI, an accommodation was reached whereby they would supply sufficient lobsters to the flight if they would desist from using the Queen's aircraft to go fishing. It was also the case that part of the HSE course (Hunter Simulator and Emergencies) was to be thrown off the lifeboat in Bideford Bay and after a suitable time to allow one to become soaked with cold sea and sea sick from being in a bobbing dinghy - immersion suits of those days were not very waterproof - along came the chopper to winch up the brave Hunter pilots and fly them back to base.
The other trick they had was to have several airman who volunteered for "wet winching", one of the requirements demanded was that that they were teetotal as the M.O. authorised a generous tot of rum for each survivor so the flight were able to acquire a regular supply.