The positives of negative buoyancy!

Finally, some clear thinking on the importance buoyancy has in the diving community. Wait a minute, what diving community is it important to? As a matter of fact, how many diving communities are there? Why don’t you just think about those two questions while I continue with the first thought.

Buoyancy is all about Archimedes, who was a Greek mathematician/scientist living in the 3^rd century BC.

Using scientific methods he determined that “…an object immersed in a liquid partially or totally is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced”.

Well, have you thought long enough on those two diving community questions? The answer is… understanding and mastering  Buoyancy is important in every diving community.

In the recreational diving community the attainment of Neutral buoyancy at any depth is the desired objective to be considered a competent diver. However Positive buoyancy is the most sought after and taught skill for a dive profile to have a happy conclusion. Then there is Negative buoyancy which has become the bain of sport divers and those who teach them.

In the Commercial diving community the knowledge, skills and abilities  (attitudes) when it comes to buoyancy is more a job for job tool and capability. That means that Positive, neutral and negative buoyancy is mission dictated and performed professionally to a successful conclusion.

In the Special Response Diving community Negative buoyancy is king! This community includes Police divers, Public Safety divers, emergency response divers, tactical divers, military divers, forensic divers and any other group that performs underwater search and recovery missions. Believe it or not trying to find something on the bottom while neutrally buoyant is a fools errand. Now some will argue that neutral buoyancy keeps the diver from disturbing the bottom, and that may work once in a while, but if you want to find something on the bottom you must become the bottom. This is achieved only with negative buoyancy. The only way to constantly have a positive resolution to an underwater search is becoming proficient in the use of negative buoyancy.

Remember, in underwater search & recovery you get positive results when negative buoyancy is king!

Written by - Michael W. Gast

He who has the most gear is an idiot.

This post will probably upset a lot of people. Probably because you have already spent all that money on your awesome new gear. So please hold your judgment until the end.

I love gadgets! I love cool gizmos and tools that allow me to conquer the challenges of life. You want to make me happy? Just drop me off at Home Depot and I will dream and scheme for hours. I probably should have an adult with me when I go there...
Every sport, profession or hobby, has some new must have tool or toy breaking into the market almost every month. Sometimes they are really amazingly helpful inventions that improve whatever it is you are doing. But sometimes they are a little bit weird and a lot of useless. I mean just look at the picture to the right!

Dive gear is no exception, and is one of the most widely discussed topics of any diving field. From Sport Diving to Public Safety Diving to Commercial Diving; dive gear is talked about among divers, like street racers talk about their cars, or my family and Fantasy Football. It's your connection to the underwater world. For some people it's just a tool, while for others, it's their identity.

Let me clarify something. This blog is about Public Safety Diving. I'm not saying anything about sport divers here, so please continue to hold your judgment. Alright, here we go.

I have written previously about The Importance of Uniformity. I believe very strongly that as a team, every piece of gear should be the same. And I'm also a big believer that if it does not serve a purpose to your mission, get rid of it. Some of you are thinking about the "what ifs?" What if I drop my knife? What if I lose the search line? What if my regulator free flows? What if my light dies? What if my fin strap breaks? What if my depth gauge stops working? What if my computer batteries decide to give up the ghost while I'm 30 feet down? WHAT IF?!!!
Ok. So what? Does this means it's the end of the world? No!

 Last week I wrote about not trading in your common sense for toys and technology. The same thing applies here. Divers tend to feel that the more gadgets they add to their BC, the better a diver they will become. Even equipment manufacturers will rename something and make a diver believe they will be a better diver if they just buy that piece of equipment. Be careful that you do not become easily swayed by the shiny box and smooth talk.



For sport diving, there are some really cool accessories to enhance your gear and overall diving experience. For example, this thingy pictured right here is a personal favorite of mine. ----------------------------->
It's a device that is capable of sending out a signal to rescuers, that you were an idiot and have no idea how to navigate, monitor your air, or start your dive into the current, and in some cases, all three. It asks you on the home page of the website, if your life is worth $299. I know mine is! That's why I'm gonna buy two of them! So I can be extra stupid!

Really people?!!! We are just making it easier for divers to operate without the basic skills! Learn to use a compass and be back on the boat when the captain says so! There, I just saved your life, and your wallet $300. Take your dive buddy out for lunch and tell them I said they are welcome.

Public Safety Divers need to understand that the gear you use does not make the diver. And in the hazardous arena that is Public Safety Diving, the more equipment you have the greater chance of entanglement.

So when choosing your diving setup, here are some things I recommend you take into consideration.

• Find a BC that is low profile. The less you stick out the better. I use Zeagle Scouts for me and my team.
• Regulators should be streamlined, and if possible, should be environmentally sealed. Your gonna be on the bottom stirring up all kinds of sediment, so the more you have sealed the less maintenance you will need. The Atomic Line is great, as well as Aqualung Titans.
• Knives should be attached to the BC somewhere around the waist area. You should be able to comfortably be able to take it out and replace it just by feel. It should also have a basic, yet effective, locking mechanism.
• We use AIR 2's as our safe second regulators. It reduces the amount of hoses coming from the first stage and slims down the whole setup.

These are just some things to think about. You have to keep in mind entanglement, entanglement, entanglement. The more you stick out with your gear, the better chance you will end up in a very awkward dance with something on the bottom.

Ok, you can judge now.

Search negatively my friends! 

The rise of technology, and the fall of common sense.

We got the call at about 9:30 AM. We loaded up, headed out, and arrived at a small lake that was nestled in the middle of a highway interchange. We were informed by Florida Highway Patrol that the incident had happened the night before, when a person driving a pickup truck, had lost control and driven off the interstate and gone into this lake. The driver had gotten out and was fine, but the truck was now making friends with the fishes.

I geared up and walked to the waters edge as my partner got the search line. We could see the tire tracks where the vehicle had gone in, and so using that as our LSP (Last Seen Point) we started an arc search. About 10 minutes later I located the vehicle that was, in fact, a pickup truck. It was just sitting there on all four wheels glistening in the early morning sun, about 120 feet from shore.

Well, to make this story short so I can talk on what this post is really about; we recovered the truck and all was good. But when I had come up after locating the truck, the wrecker operator was just laughing and shaking his head. He told us about a recovery he was at a few days before, where 6 off duty police officers had spent 6 hours using side scan sonar, looking for a 20 foot box truck in a 50 foot wide canal that was only 20 feet deep. He just laughed and said, "It took them 6 hours with all those guys and technology, and you two come out here, and in 10 minutes, find a pickup in a 40 foot lake with a piece of string!"


Does the title make sense now? You see where I'm going with this? Dive teams get sold on all kinds of new gadgets and gear, and pay for it by trading in there knowledge of the basic principles of Public Safety Diving. A sad side note: the amount of money these teams try to get to buy said gadgets, is money that could be used for upgrading basic equipment, or be used to pay for additional training days.
Give me money to pay a team some overtime to train with the basics, and I'll give you better results then any piece of technology can produce. You think that's a bold statement? Let's take a look at a recent event in New Orleans.

I have a few things I would like to point out. First, is the amount of people who had been involved in the search. Multiple departments and volunteers assisted in looking for this missing teacher. The State Rep. in the video says that the area had been searched before but the vehicle had been missed. Now whether that was with side scan sonar or with search patterns I don't know.
Second, is the relative closeness to shore where they located the missing teachers vehicle.
Third, there were a lot of other vehicle recovered! This tells me that they do not go into these areas regularly.

As I researched this story, I kept asking one question. Why was that car missed? If divers had been in there and they were proficient at their search patterns, why was that car not located?

We have to be careful that we are not sold into the thinking that big expensive toys make it all easier, or even more effective. You can only have one of two answers. I located the object, or the object was not in the search area. Are your search methods ingrained into your team so well that you can confidently give one of those two answers? Or do you have doubt when you get done with a search?

I'm not some stone age diver that thinks that technology will take over the world. I think that there some applications where side scan sonar is very useful. Heck, I was interviewed on the Nancy Grace Show one time about the use of side scan sonar in an investigation. In that investigation it was very helpful in locating the missing person. Things like side scan sonar and metal detectors can definitely be useful tools to assist your team, but I believe that you need to know and be able to perform effectively, the basic search patterns first!

So what I'm really trying to say is: Don't sell your common sense to buy technology. That's my point. Ok, I'm done.

Search negatively my friends!

Jordan and the missing dead.

I had been a Special Response Diver for only 4 weeks. I was about to move into my 3rd phase of training at the International Alert Academy. I had chosen to go into Aquatic Operations as my specialty and it was the Friday before we were to start. We had just finished our end-of-ERT training ceremony and promotions and were ready to kick it back for the weekend, when the training officer over Aquatics, came up to those of us that would be going into his unit and said, "Pack your bags boys, we leave in the morning. We're getting deployed to help with a body search that's part of a murder investigation."

After myself and the other guys had a mild heart attack from excitement, we tried to act cool and put on faces that said whatever, it's just another day in the office. But who were we kidding?! This was the ultimate call out! We would be putting all that training to the test!

All through our training in Miami, we had found cars that were either stolen or insurance fraud. But this was huge! We were heading to Lubbock, Texas to assist the local Sheriff there. The whole trip out there, we thought about what our Instructor had taught us about searching for a drowned person or murder victim. "You never find a body. Bodies find you." Cool as cucumbers. Ok, maybe cucumbers in a microwave.


We showed up to a very warm welcome from the requesting agency, who was just happy to have body's there for this work. As we pulled up to the marina that was the staging area, we noticed a few other divers that would be coming out with us. We were told that these were Public Safety Divers who had been diving for many years. Great. Our first public performance, and now we have to deal with the pressure of impressing these veterans with all the stuff we think we know.

Our team of greenhorns quickly learned a valuable lesson. Don't be intimidated because of titles. Let me explain what gave us this revelation.
First let me explain these two men that were gearing up with us. One guy was 6'2" and probably weighed about 350 pounds. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. While putting on his wetsuit, through his grunts and groans, and winded banter, was telling us about how his wetsuit was custom made because he was so big. It cost him over $600 for this thing, and was a wonderfully bright yellow and red with purple accents. He was so proud! He needed almost 40 pounds on his weight belt!
His partner was next to him putting on the most complicated looking harness I've ever seen. One of my teammates asked him why he had so many knives and shears. He proudly answered that they never get in the water without a minimum of 5 cutting tools. You know...in case you drop the first 4 trying to cut your way out of the giant fishing line factory you plan on swimming into down there.
So as these two gentlemen were putting on their rescue helmets (again, not joking) we boarded the boat and set off to search.

The lake we were searching was not really deep in the search areas. Sometimes it was only 2-4 feet deep, but it still had to be searched. Where this lake lacked in depth, it made up for in vegetative growth. A lot of saw grass and decomposing saw grass root balls were along the bottom in our search areas.
You may be asking yourself right now why this is important. To most experienced Public Safety Divers it's not really important; however to a straight up newbie it is. You see, the visibility was about 8 inches, and every time my hand touched one of these decomposing root balls my thought process would go something
like this...

*Hand touches slimy root ball and inhales regulator down esophagus*
"Ahhh I found a body!"
*Realizes it's just a root ball*
"Woohoo! It's not a dead body!"
*While pulling out regulator from esophagus comes to realization*
"Crap. Now I have to keep searching."

And repeat.

So for two days this went on. We did not locate the victim, but we did recover a shotgun that was used in a different homicide. To say the least we learned a lot! Our first call out taught us some things that only the real world of public safety diving could teach us.

1st - We learned that just because they have a bunch of cool toys and expensive wetsuits, does not mean they are good divers. Their methods and equipment prevented them from searching effectively and efficiently. Don't feel like you have to impress anyone. Just do your job and let others decide by your actions if you're good enough.

2nd - Just because you did not locate a body or a gun does not mean you failed. Remember, there are only two answers... I located the object, or, the object was not in the search area. It takes a team to cover the area we covered in those two days. And as a team we accomplished our mission.

3rd - You can still breathe out of your regulator even if it's down your esophagus! I would not have believed it unless I had experienced it so many times. I wonder if there is a specialty card for that...



Search negatively my friends!

There are 2 kinds of divers in the world... -Post by Michael Gast

As a full time police diver for over twenty five years I have had the blessing and the curse of observing in-service training and its effect on the dive resource capability of various agencies. The purpose of in-service training is to hone the knowledge, skills and abilities (attitudes) of the diving resource so as to maintain a level playing field among the various diving personnel. The other side of the coin is simply training for the sake of training. This being said, what is the circumstance when your team meets for in-service training?  Since most of you reading this are in some way involved in underwater search & recovery or rescue I will leave you to decide the type of training the team in this story practiced. 

One evening my partner and I were dispatched to a possible drowning in the south end of the county. Upon arrival the fire rescue divers were just exiting the water after searching for over forty-five minutes. Their on-scene commander had determined it was no longer a rescue, but is now a recovery for the police divers.

Since the first order of business was to gather information and determine the last scene point (also referred as a datum), and never having worked this rock pit before, I asked two of the eight divers about the depth and bottom condition. They both stated that the depth was over 60 feet with zero visibility.

With the sun setting and having talked to the one witness who claims to have watched the victim go under, my partner and I swam out to the last seen point with an anchor, down line, float and a search line. Because of the reported depth the down line was over sixty feet long, although when the anchor hit bottom I still had over forty feet of line in my hands.

After securing the excess line to the float we descended to twenty feet and landed next to a Ford van sitting on its wheels. Being over two hundred feet from shore in twenty feet of water on its wheels this van was an enigma to be solved later. Being able to see the whole van in this twilight the visibility was established as fifteen feet horizontal. Using the van as our base I tended my partner as he conducted an arc search starting out ten feet and arcing 180 degrees on each pass with ten feet increments each time. On the second pass my partner signaled that he had located the victim and secured the line around the victim’s chest.

The search that we conducted lasted less than five minutes.

What did we do differently than the eight divers who searched for over forty five minutes?

When I told the last fire diver on the scene that there was a Ford van in the middle of the lake, his response was,  “ I know, we put it there for training. This is one of our training lakes”.

Well it is your turn to determine the type of in-service that goes on here!

REMEMBER!

“HOW YOU TRAIN, IS HOW YOU PERFORM WHEN IT GETS REAL ”

EBZ

A Gentle Reminder. Gentle Like A Belly-Flop.

Last time I checked, you can not inhale water. Actually you can; but in doing so there have been reported many health risks. One of those risks is death. I'm not joking. People actually die from drowning! And you know what's even more amazing? Public Safety Divers still do it! Even understanding there is a risk of dying, they still try to inhale that H2O. Why?!

Apparently no one told them that it's no bueno. (Free Spanish lesson. You're welcome.) If someone had, then maybe they might have been more careful. They might have had a different outcome. But where can one learn this kind of wisdom? Where can you go to understand what not to do?

It's really not a question of where you can go, but who you can go to. The who you learn from is more important than where you learn. There are a lot of places you can go and learn advanced/specialty diving. Almost every sport diving agency has some kind of Search & Recovery certification. And if you are an advanced open water instructor with your agency, you're all good to teach it. But has that instructor ever actually done it? Have they been down and located what was missing and brought it back? I'm not talking about a weight belt that fell off the boat in the ocean; I'm talking about zero visibility water looking for a gun that's been pulled apart and tossed in piece by piece with every news station for 50 miles watching your every move. How would that instructor perform
then?

Sadly this is happening. Police and fire departments across the country are finding and hiring sport diving instructors to train their people in something the instructor has no experience in, or business teaching. They are learning in clear water and comfortable conditions. If it's raining they go home. Somehow this seems acceptable. Amazing.

Let me ask you a question. Why would you train anywhere other than where you would be performing the job? Pools are really nice; in fact I was in a pool last night. But I was teaching open water newbies, NOT people that need to be bringing their A-game at the worst times in the worst conditions! We need to get away from this mentality of trusting an instructor because they have a card that says they can teach a class. Take the time to interview someone who is going to train your department. Ask them what their experience is. I don't care how many people you have taught, I want to know how long you have been doing recoveries and what kind of cases you have worked on. Tell me stories and some of your mistakes you have made.
Tell me why you teach what you teach! Are you doing this because it's a good gig and the money is good, or are you doing this because you want to bring the very best training to those that serve our community's? It is OK to ask these questions! If someone is going to get all defensive because you are challenging there credibility, then something is wrong.

So to sum this whole thing up in two words...be annoying. Ask questions, do your research, and don't condemn you and your team to failing before the class even starts. Write down what you want to accomplish, and every question you can think of before you interview a potential instructor. Then get at it!

Search negatively my friends!

It started with a Z. (Guest Writer Edition)

 If you have ever wondered where and when police diving began, you are in luck. Because I know the who, what, where, when, why and how. WOW! That sounds like an investigative technique. But before you can arrive at the correct answer you must first have a proper question. You must define police diving and establish the criterion for that definition.

There are many individuals and agencies that could lay claim to police diving beginnings but there is only one individual and agency in which the claim is valid. Before we go there however a brief history overview is necessary.

·         Hard hat (Helmeted) surface supply diving began in the 19^th century

·         SCUBA diving began in 1943 when J. Cousteau and E.Gagnan developed the regulator

·          Z served in the US Navy from 1948-1957 as a salvage diver/surface swimmer SCUBA diver

·         “The Silent World” by J. Cousteau published in 1953

·         Swimming pool owners associations offer skin diving training 1957

·         Sea Hunt aired on television in 1957

·         Z joined the Dade County Sheriff’s Office in 1958 and was assigned to the rescue squad

·         Z begins training other rescue squad members and establishes a police diver standard

·         Connecticut State Police Send volunteers to US Navy dive school in Groton Conn. 1959

·         YMCA begins skin diving instruction in 1960 with PADI and NAUI close in the running

·         Michigan State Police begin training for police divers in 1961

·         Z conducts graduation ceremony for first police divers in March 1961 (Police Diving Curriculum)

·         NYPD begins using police divers instead of commercial divers in 1967

·         Dive Rescue International coined the phrase Public Safety Diver in the 1970’s

Z who is Edwin Blaze Zehnder left the US Navy and joined the Dade County Sheriff’s Office in 1957, and because of his SCUBA diving knowledge, skills and abilities (attitude), when he graduated from the police academy in 1958 was assigned to the Rescue Squad. Z began the proper training of the other members of the rescue squad and it was soon apparent that his knowledge skills and abilities (attitude) aided in advancing the capabilities of the whole squad.

In 1959 Z and another deputy recovered a drowning victim and administered mouth to mouth resuscitation. Several days later both he and his partner were diagnosed with spinal meningitis. The other Deputy died, while Z was left more or less deaf with only 10% hearing in one ear. While recovering in the hospital Z was approached by his Bureau commander and asked to create a training standard and manual for underwater search & recovery. 

Writing a manual was a daunting task for Z, who had to leave school after 8^th grade to help in his family’s business. He later earned his GED in the US Navy.

Z took the challenge and was able to produce a first rate Police Diver training manual with hand drawn illustrations and a standard of training. Something to consider is the fact that there was no PADI, NAUI, YMCA or any recognized Diver training agencies at this point. He had to draw from his US Navy training and skills he developed as a police diver.

In March 1961 the Dade County Public Safety Department (formally Sheriff’s Office) graduated six police divers who were trained totally in house utilizing a Police diving curriculum and standards. One of those Police Divers was Joseph N Johnson, who remained on the Underwater Search & Recovery Squad as a full time Police Diver until he retired in 1992.

Z continued to serve as officer in charge and lead diver until he retired in 1989 when he passed the mantle to the National Academy of Police Diving. His dream was that one day all police divers would be trained to a common standard and methodology in underwater search and recovery. The NAPD which began in 1988 with Z as a founding member continues to share his vision.

Remember, it began with a Z.

Edwin Blaze Zehnder (Police Diver 1958-1989),

The Father of Police Diving

Today's post was written by Michael Gast.

Michael retired as an active police diver from the Miami-Dade County Police Dive Team in 2007. He has extensive experience, with over 25 years as a full-time police diver. He has personally been involved in more than 5,000 underwater recovery and investigation operations. Michael is the founder and president of the National Academy of Police Diving.

Can you find my needle? It's in that haystack.

I hate that expression. It's like finding a needle in a haystack.
You might as well say "Hey! There is no way you can do this. You will fail if you try and you are a loser!"
Well I'm not a loser. Unless it's basketball. I'm about as good at basketball as a blind man is at charades.

It's said that the idiom goes back to the 1600's. Obviously they did not have proper training in search and recovery methods back then or else the saying would have never caught on.

When people lose something in a big body of water, they are surprised when I'm willing to take up the challenge. It always makes me laugh when they are surprised, because I think to myself why did they ask me if they thought it was impossible.

Several months ago I had a friend come up to me with one such challenge. He lives on a lake and was on a jet ski when he turned to sharply and fell off the jet ski. In what I'm sure was, a gloriously graceful dismount; my friends watch fell off. A very nice Invicta his family had gotten him one year for Christmas.

He was pretty bummed about losing it because of the sentimental value. 

The lake is 1 square mile and 50 feet deep. He thought it was gone and would forever haunt the fish on the bottom of that lake.
While he was telling me about all the events leading up to the heart wrenching separation, you could almost hear the doubt intensify in his voice. "No problem" I told him. "I'll come by later this week and find that thing."

When I got there I asked the same questions I always ask. I was able to narrow this haystack down to a hay bail! Once I got in the water, the bottom composition informed me that the "needle" might as well have been painted bright pink.
After an hour of searching I located the watch and recovered it to the disbelief of my friend.

Don't be so quick to see large body's of water as haystacks. Learn to ask the right questions that will minimize the area you have to search. Work from a known to an unknown. 

Search negatively my friends!

The Importance Of Uniformity

In my world there is nothing worst than looking like an incompetent newbie. Anyone who has been in the Public Safety Diving business for any amount of time, knows what I'm talking about. Showing up to a callout and suddenly everyone on the team looks like it's their first time suiting up. It looks bad and is embarrassing.  Not what you want, especially when the media or other agencies are around.

So why does this happen? Mainly because dive teams don't take uniformity to an all encompassing level. The only thing that should be uniform is our training and t-shirts, right? Wrong. Every detail of your team and it's equipment needs to be the same.

This is something my team takes seriously. We have everything the same right down to the compass and

where it's kept on the BC. Each item was picked because of it's functionality and ease of use. In the real world things go wrong. Regs free flow and BC's auto inflate, and It's really nice to be able to grab another guys setup and go! You should not have to think about where their light is or how his BC works. You have a job to do.

The only thing I allow my guys to have of their own is a wetsuit, mask, and fins. Even then, we train in the other guys fins just in case.

When doing search patterns it is also good to be uniform in how you do them. Hold the line the same way. If your tending, you should all stand the same way. In doing this there is no question in what is going on with the other team members. You can also step in for someone and not lose the momentum of your operation.

I'm going to drop a truth bomb on you. If you don't know your team, and I mean really know them. You will not function as a team. Profound I know. This sounds like a no-brainer  but is often overlooked within Police and Fire Departments. They have guys who are "on the dive team" but are regular patrol and only get called if they are really needed. Do they even know who they are diving with? Who is that guy up there tending me?

So take a moment and ask yourself what you and your team can improve on. What can you make more streamlined?

People say that all publicity is good publicity. Being the incompetent newbie on the five o'clock is not what they mean...trust me.

Jump in! The water is like pea soup!

The other day I was talking with a police diver and his team, who had come to Miami to train with another department. The team was from Louisiana and most of their missions are around lake Pontchartrain. The team leader was commenting on how happy he was to be able to get his guys down here to train where there was visibility.

I would like to make 2 observations on this matter.

#1 - After the team leader made this comment, he continued in saying that all they have to train in back home, is dirty water that you can't see anything in. I was thinking GREAT! That's exactly what you should be training in, because that's real world Public Safety Diving!
Now I do understand that you need to be able to see to learn certain skills. Skills like using lift bags. Learn in a controlled environment so you have that muscle memory when you really can't see. I get it.

But is it necessary to travel 20 hours to find those locations? Absolutely not. Many divers think that going

back to the swimming pool is for newbies. For those open water wanna-be's who are not yet worthy for real diving in that big dangerous ocean. Well their wrong. You might be able to find great, deep, pools at your local collage. Look for ones with a diving team. They usually have a diving well that's 16 feet deep; more than suitable for learning the basics of lift bags. And while your there, work on some other skills that will push your ability's as well as your teams. It's not about the pool, but what you do in it.
This also gives a team leader the ability to evaluate how their divers dive. Do they have neutral buoyancy? do they actually know how to kick? Do they actually know how to tie that knot, or do they just say they do? Sometimes it's good to go back to the basics to learn the hard stuff.

#2 -  What is visibility? The National Academy of Police Diving describes visibility like this:

• Zero Visibility: The inability to visually observe any object at any distance from the faceplate of the mask.
• Low Visibility: The inability to visually observe an object beyond the diver's outstretched hand.
• Black Water: The inability to visually observe an object because of the lack of light penetration.

Using the above terms, what kind of diving does your department have to deal with? If you have to learn in a pool first that's fine; but nothing can replace the confidence and skill that comes from performing in the real thing.

I would love to hear what you think on this and any stories you might have from training, so leave a comment!

Jordan and the guy that had no idea what was going on.

In the early stages of my company...also known as the learn the hard way stages...I received a call from a man who had lost a propeller off his boat. He had a thick Haitian accent, and was a bit hard to understand over the phone; so we agreed to meet at the waters edge on the day I was available. So I got all my gear ready and brought one of my divers out, and we met the gentleman and his brother on the edge of the Miami river in downtown Miami, Florida.

Now I had prepared my gear and my mind for a small propeller recovery. Evidently small is a relative term.
What this guy called small I called big. Like a propeller off of a freighter ship big. Well it's a good thing I just happened to have the 2000 pound lift bag in the truck!

We then started to get more info from the two guys and learned that the were not actually around when said propeller and ship decided to go their separate ways. We also learned that the captain nor any crew were available to question, being as they were in Haiti. And to add to the fun, they were not entirely sure this was the right place on the river! Perfect. I have a 300 yard by 60 yard search area that might not even be the correct search area. Anything else? Oh yeah; there will be continuous boat traffic that will make our searching something like Frogger.

Ready, set, go at a very methodical pace. We started out doing Arc searches working from the Last Seen Point, and working up river. The ship had been waiting on the draw bridge to go up when the propeller came loose. So we judged where a ship that size would wait, factored in the length of the ship and what side the prop was on, and worked back to it's starting destination. We spent about 2 and a half hours searching, when we finally located the object. Ok. Step one done. Now for step 2...get this bad boy up on land. We informed the brothers that we had found it and asked what they had planned as a recovery method. I was expecting a tow truck, or a crane, heck I would have been happy with a tractor. This big hunk of brass was not going to jump over that seawall on it's own!

It was at this moment I realized how underestimating people are of raw materials and there weight. These guys wanted to pull this propeller over the seawall with 4 men and a rope. Negative ghost rider. We needed something bigger."Well we have a forklift at the wharf!" I told them, "Great! How are we going to get it there?"

Anyone who decides to hire a random fisherman to tow an 1800 pound propeller that is attached to a 2000 pound lift bag up a river, is probably not the kind of person that should be making decisions. Well like I said before, this was in our learn the hard way stage of growth.

We finally made it to the forklift and got the propeller out. We seriously almost died twice. We also learned a lot of lessons. Like planning every detail of your mission before you start. If you are doing a hired job for a client, you need to clearly define what that job encompasses, and make it clear that you make the final decision. It is ultimately your safety. These guys had no clue what goes into recovering something like this.

In life you learn. In learning the hard way you learn a lot.

That water is deep...almost as deep as those misconceptions.

One of my favorite times on scene during a recovery is when people start asking questions. It's not always from bystanders either. It can be from police officers or firefighters, or sometimes the poor kid who "just forgot to put it in park before I got out to tie down the jet ski, and that's why my truck, trailer, and jet ski are underwater." Whoever it is, their questions tend to be the same.

Most people don't grow up around the beautiful waters of the Caribbean. They grow up swimming in the nearby lake or mud hole like I did. There was no way you were going to see the bottom until your face hit it. And if you can't see the bottom, it must be bottomless! This reasoning alone is why we will always need Police and Public Safety Divers. People believe that water somehow swallows whatever gets thrown in. Gun, car, body, favorite pair of glasses, it don't matter. It's lost and gone forever. They believe a lot of things that are not true when it comes to water. You think I'm kidding?

These are the top five questions I get while on scene during a recovery, and how I usually answer them.

1. Question Asker: You're gonna go dive in that water?
    Me: Yes.
    Question Asker: But it's disgusting!
    Me: It helps build your immune system.

2. QA: How deep is it?
    Me: How deep do you think?
    QA: Like...*wrong number* feet. (It's never close. They will always go 10-20 feet deeper than what it is).
    Me: No it's only *correct depth* feet.

3. QA: Are you afraid of gators? (I live in South Florida)
    Me: No.
    QA: Why not? You know I've seen one in here!
    Me: Oh yeah? Well maybe we will get lucky and get to pet him!
    QA: No way man! You're crazy!
 
4. QA: How can you see?
    Me: With my eyes.
    QA: But that water is nasty!
    Me: I have magic eyes.

5. QA: What are you looking for?
    Me: Pirate gold!
    QA: No, really?
    Me: No, really. Pirate gold.

You can probably tell I like to have fun with it. Some questions you can do that with and some you can't. But you will always have the opportunity to teach them something. I have been on recoveries where I spend more time explaining how we do what we do to the police or fire personnel than actually doing the recovery. They just don't know what's really in that murky abyss. That's a great time to build relationships and trust. Some department dive teams want to be this secretive group that does their thing and clears scene. Don't be that group. You can do more for your team's reputation by teaching others about what you do than you realize.

Part of the training for my team is how to deal with questions. We go over scenarios on questions that might get asked and how to properly handle them. They know what can be answered and what needs to get kicked up the chain of command. This is something that I would encourage you to do with your team. Because there is nothing more embarrassing than your divers not even knowing how deep the water is.

What it is...

This is probably not the only conversation out there like this. It's most certainly not a new conversation. It's just a vocal exclamation of what really goes on. From training to equipment; team structure and SOP's (standard operating procedures); to what's the best search method--- this blog is all about getting the conversation heard.

Now before I continue, we have to set some ground rules. First, we need to define what a Police Diver is and what a Police Diver is not. Let's define what a Police Diver is not, upfront.

A Police Diver is NOT a Professional Diver. Now before you get your diving ego hurt, let me explain. A Professional Diver is someone who makes a living from diving. They could be a boat hull cleaner, a sport diving instructor, an underwater welder, or a safety diver for movie production. These are people who dive to bring home the bacon. Police Divers are not Professional Divers, they are Police Officers. Their job is to enforce the law. One of the tools they use to do so is diving, just the same as their defensive driver training or dynamic entry training. It's a skill to increase their effectiveness.

Now to define what a Police Diver is, we need to get one thing clear. Sport or recreational diving requires you to use your eyes, while Police Diving requires you to be able to perform your mission entirely blind. This is where Police Divers stand apart from the rest. They have to complete the mission in odd hours of the night, sometimes in water that would never be found on the cover of National Geographic, and in more cases than not, do it without the use of their eyesight. This criteria also applies to Fire Rescue Divers and divers in other emergency response organizations. They are often called Public Safety Divers.
(In a later post we will go over the differences and similarities between the two).

Ok. That's out of the way.

MenFish is about informing and encouraging Police and Public Safety Divers in their already challenging job.
This blog, like I said before, is the conversation. I will be sharing a lot from my experience and lessons learned, but I want to hear from you as well! Send me your stories; comment on posts, or just read the posts and be anti-social.

So...let's get this conversation started!