Origins of NAUI’s Public Safety Diver ProgramNAUI’s involvement in public safety diving began...
Transcript of Origins of NAUI’s Public Safety Diver ProgramNAUI’s involvement in public safety diving began...
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Divers have been recovering lost souls and
equipment as long as humans have had lungs or
primitive equipment to enable them to journey
beneath the water’s surface. Not long after Emile Gagnan
and Jacques Cousteau invented and tested the first Aqua
Lung, it was demonstrated that it could be used for
military as well as civilian applications. In his landmark
book The Silent World, Cousteau writes of the recovery of
the remains of a pilot who crashed his aircraft not far from
where Cousteau’s dive team was operating.
Soon after the first scuba equipment made its way to the
United States, the first fledgling steps toward public safety
diving were taken when volunteer divers were sought out
by municipalities needing the support of underwater-
capable searchers and recovery experts. Generally, within
or near a one-hour threshold of an in-water incident,
the operation is considered a potential “rescue” by fire
departments or other public safety divers. After that
Origins of NAUI’s Public Safety Diver Program
period, or when the incident is obviously connected to a
crime, police department dive teams enter the operation.
Prior to the invention of scuba, traditional surface-
supply methods were used that required significant
training and large amounts of support equipment on-
site. With the arrival of scuba, divers could be far more
mobile and flexible in their approaches to an operation. As
the popularity of sport diving grew, many organizations
found that they had recreational divers on their payrolls. It
was a logical step for them to assume that their own divers
might fulfill this critical role, and the public safety diver
(PSD) was born.
The challenge of this paradigm is that very few sport
or recreational divers are trained in the demanding
environments often encountered during the average public
safety dive; nor are they trained in the exacting survival
and investigatory techniques required by this rapidly
growing niche of diving. Only rarely is a given search-
By Terrence Tysall, NAUI 16627, Director of Training
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and-recovery area similar to the kind of environments
encountered in a recreational scuba class or vacation
destination. Often, the recreationally trained divers found
themselves sorely lacking in basic survival skills or facing
angry investigators or plaintiffs’ attorneys questioning the
way in which they conducted the search or recovery.
NAUI’s involvement in public safety diving began when
individually qualified instructors around the world began
submitting outlines to teach various forms of public safety
diving. Because this was initially done under the auspices
of the NAUI Instructor Specified Specialty program, each
instructor’s approach to the topic was highly individualized.
As the number of instructors offering this type of training
increased, it became evident that both convergent and
divergent instructional evolution were occurring, and it was
time for guidance and greater oversight from NAUI itself.
In 2014, the NAUI Board of Directors established a PSD
advisory committee, led by NAUI members Tom Brooks
NAUI PSD course, May 2016, Orange County, California, with Course Director Josh Roten This photo was Day 2 of the
course when all divers were doing Full Face Mask skills near Newport Beach.
(NAUI 42340) and Bill Pfeiffer (NAUI 45432), under the
supervision of Training Committee Chair Lonnie Sharp
(NAUI 18314). The initial committee included 12 NAUI
members representing firefighter or police teams around
the world. The members of the PSD advisory committee
included Eric Brooks (NAUI 17438), Tom Brooks (NAUI
42340), Michael Dick (NAUI 52572), Todd Graham (NAUI
15931), Lee Hardee (NAUI 51033), Bill Pfeiffer (NAUI
45432), Kurt Roepcke (NAUI 55008), Josh Roten (NAUI
50395), Matthew Seeman (NAUI 49456), Lonnie Sharp
(NAUI 18431), Mike Sieverman (NAUI 53926), Mark
Smith (NAUI 5515) and Robert Von Loewenfeldt (NAUI
43459). The volunteer effort of each of these members
is commendable and continues the tradition of NAUI
members offering their expertise and service on behalf
of the association. It is through their efforts that NAUI
introduced its first PSD course into a highly specialized
market, and we are all in their debt.
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The initial goal of the PSD advisory committee was
to identify the best of what was being taught in public
safety diving and incorporate it into a NAUI program to
serve as a baseline for NAUI PSD training. The resulting
course objectives identify “the knowledge, skills and
abilities needed by Public Safety Divers to perform basic
underwater search, rescue and recovery in conditions
similar to that in which they were trained; and as with
all NAUI training, NAUI PSD Instructors can exceed
minimum course standards to include additional
requirements to meet local needs.”
The NAUI Public Safety Diver course standards first
appeared in the 2016 edition of the NAUI Standards and
Policies Manual. The first official NAUI PSD course was
taught by Course Director Sgt. Neail Holland (NAUI
48764) from the Oxnard Police Department in Ventura
County, California, in the first quarter of 2016. The second
course was run by Course Director Josh Roten in May of
2016 with Ken Kramer’s (NAUI 17163) team in Corona
Del Mar, California. The NAUI PSD course is being taught
in nearly every market in which NAUI is engaged. From
the coasts and heartland of the U.S. to partners from
around the globe, the NAUI PSD program grows in scope
each year.
The NAUI PSD course maintains the rigorous standards
that are the hallmark of NAUI training. NAUI PSD
standards provide the most up-to-date and comprehensive
set of entry-level PSD standards in the market, allowing
PSD teams the flexibility to include additional content to
meet local needs. Anyone seeking additional information
or with questions concerning NAUI Public Safety Diver
training is encouraged to contact the NAUI Training
Department ([email protected] or 1-813-628-6284).
The second course was run by Course Director Josh Roten in May of 2016 with Ken Kramer’s team in Corona Del Mar,
California.