News
The Sport in Public Safety Diving
One of these days I would like to write a book on some of the public safety diving operations I have had the honor of participating on. Each one comes with their own story of how the body, vehicle, evidence or item got into the water as well as what the divers had to go through to make the recovery. For 33 years I have been conducting underwater criminal investigations so there are a few stories to tell.
One day you find yourself searching a small farmer’s pond for a murder weapon with leaches in the water and cow paddies on the embankment and the next you’re diving below the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 60 feet of water for a tractor trailer that went off the bridge the night before with its driver still inside. A few days later you drive across the state to a man-made lake to search in 120 feet for the body of a young man who, in his intoxicated state, thought he could swim across the lake. If the depth was not challenging enough, at 60 feet you hit the tree tops of the oak trees that still stand in for forest that was never cleared before the lake was created. As you might imagine, every operation challenges your search as well as your diving skills. So your success and survivability depends on them.
Recreational dive training agencies play a vital role in the development of our public safety diving professionals. Recreational dive training can lay down a solid foundation for public safety diving if the diver has continued their diving education by going beyond their initial open water certificate. As you know, each level of training (Open Water Diver, Advance Diver, Rescue Diver, etc.) builds off the other and if taught to the level the courses were intended, you have a solid foundation to produce a highly trained and competent public safety diving professional.
To convert to public safety diving, all that’s needed are qualified training programs that address the needed skills and abilities of the public safety diver’s potential missions and conditions they will be asked to handle. The key to this conversion are the courses and instructors who teach them. The courses must be written and then taught by highly trained and experienced public safety diving professionals who’s been there and done it and who understand what’s needed to succeed and survive.
Your abilities and diving skills are what you bring to the dive site. Training and experience are what gives you those skills and abilities. The more you have the more you bring to every mission and the better your chances of succeeding and surviving that mission. If your diving skills are weak, you have a weak diver on the bottom unprepared, uncomfortable and not focused or ready for the mission.
You might be asking by now, “What skills, knowledge and training does today’s Public Safety Divers need?” Well it depends on the environment, conditions and mission of the individual team. But to point you in the right direction, the basics include: body recovery, vehicle recovery, evidence recovery as well as rescue diving. To understand these operations, you need to know: the physics of body movement in water, rescue and recovery procedures, vehicle entry dynamic, oxidation, fingerprint diminution, underwater evidence collection techniques, standards for documentation, crime scene sketching and photography, search patterns, chain of custody and courtroom procedures just to name of few.
Add to this mix conditions like deep diving, low or no visibility, swift water, and contaminated water you can quickly see where training should be on going and never ending. You should also be able to see why a solid diving foundation is needed and why advancing your dive credentials beyond the Open Water Diver level is so important.
In this post 9-11 era, our abilities to properly and safely respond to and handle a wide variety of public safety diving missions has never been so important. We can be proud that we have divers around the world who have committed themselves to not only train to meet their mission challenges but who use their diving skills to provide a valuable and needed service.
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SCUBAPRO offers a 30-year first owner warranty on all regulators, with a revision period of two years or 100 dives. All SCUBAPRO regulators are of course certified according to the new European test standard EN250-2014.
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More information available on www.scubapro.com.
Jake Davies boards Ghazala Explorer for an unforgettable Red Sea diving experience…
Overnight, the wind picked up, making the planned morning dive a bit bumpy on the Zodiacs to the drop point on Thomas Reef. There, we would dive along the reef before descending through the canyon and then passing under the arch before ascending the wall with a gentle drift. The site provided great encounters with more pelagic species, including shoals of large barracuda, tuna, and bigeye trevally.
Once back on the boat, it was time to get everything tied down again as we would head back south. This time, with the wind behind us, heading to Ras Mohammed to dive Jackfish Alley for another great gentle drift wall dive before then heading up the coast towards the Gulf of Suez to moor up at the wreck of the Thistlegorm. This being the highlight wreck dive of the trip and for many onboard, including myself, it was the first time diving this iconic wreck. I had heard so much about the wreck from friends, and globally, this is a must on any diver’s list. Fortunately for us, there was only one other boat at the site, which was a rarity. A great briefing was delivered by Ahmed, who provided a detailed background about the wreck’s history along with all the required safety information as the currents and visibility at the site can be variable.
Kitting up, there was a lot of excitement on deck before entering the water and heading down the shoreline. Descending to the wreck, there was a light northerly current which reduced the visibility, making it feel more like the conditions that can be found off the Welsh coast. At 10m from the bottom, the outline of the wreck appeared as we reached the area of the wreck which had been bombed, as our mooring line was attached to part of the propeller shaft. Arriving on deck, instantly everywhere you looked there were many of the supplies which the ship was carrying, including Bren Carrier tanks and projectiles that instantly stood out.
We headed around the exterior, taking a look at the large propeller and guns mounted on deck before entering the wreck on the port side to take a look in the holds. It was incredible to see all the trucks, Norton 16H, and BSA motorcycles still perfectly stacked within, providing a real snapshot in time.
Overall, we had four dives on the Thistlegorm, where for all of the dives we were the only group in the water, and at times, there were just three of us on the whole wreck, which made it even more special, especially knowing that most days the wreck has hundreds of divers. Along with the history of the wreck, there was plenty of marine life on the wreck and around, from big green turtles to batfish, along with shoals of mackerel being hunted by trevally. Some unforgettable dives.
The final leg of the trip saw us cross back over the Suez Canal to the Gobal Islands where we planned to stay the night and do three dives at the Dolphin House for the potential of sharing the dive with dolphins. The site, which included a channel that was teeming with reef fish, especially large numbers of goatfish that swam in large shoals along the edge of the reef. These were nice relaxing dives to end the week. Unfortunately, the dolphins didn’t show up, which was okay as like all marine life they are difficult to predict and you can’t guarantee what’s going to be seen. With the last dive complete, we headed back to port for the final night where it was time to clean all the kit and pack before the departure flight the next day.
The whole week from start to finish on Ghazala Explorer was amazing; the boat had all the facilities you need for a comfortable week aboard. The crew were always there to help throughout the day and the chefs providing top quality food which was required after every dive. The itinerary providing some of the best diving with a nice mixture of wreck and reef dives. I would recommend the trip to anyone, whether it’s your first Red Sea liveaboard in the Red Sea or you’re revisiting. Hopefully, it’s not too long before I head back to explore more of the Red Sea onboard Ghazala Explorer.
To find out more about the Northern Red Sea reef and wrecks itineraries aboard Ghazala Explorer, or to book, contact Scuba Travel now:
Email: dive@scubatravel.com
Tel: +44 (0)1483 411590
Photos: Jake Davies / Avalon.Red
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