Public Safety Dive Training Done Right

**We are a public safety dive training company absolutely committed to elevating the craft of public safety diving through proven training programs and certifications**

Our passion for safe and effective diving is virtually limitless.

We Dive Exactly What We Teach

All of our staff divers and Instructors are veteran public safety divers on active dive teams. Not retired, currently active.

We’ve found that being able to relate directly to our students with an experience that happened last week, or last month, really helps students grasp the concept we are trying to teach.

And our breadth of experience is increasing every day, which means our future students can benefit from that expanded knowledge.

Meet Our Instructors and Staff Divers

CLICK ON NAME TO EXPAND STAFF BIO’S

Portrait image of Tim Andro, ERDI Instructor

Tim is the founder, owner, and head certifying instructor of Northeast Public Safety Divers. He has almost 20 years of recreational and technical dive experience, including Advanced Trimix and Closed-Circuit Rebreather with depths over 200’, and has logged over 3,500 dives (including over 800 deco dives). He has also been a firefighter for 22 years, 12 of those as a public safety diver, and is the current Dive Coordinator for Mahwah Fire & Rescue Co #1 since 2015, and the current President of the North Jersey Regional SCUBA Task Force since 2019. Tim has run dive operations for the FBI, US Coast Guard, NY and NJ Port Authority Police, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Alberta, and numerous other smaller jurisdictions throughout NY & NJ. His expertise is widely recognized in the public safety dive community where he has been a requested speaker at numerous dive conferences and seminars, as well as a requested consultant on emerging dive standards. Tim was awarded The Medal Of Valor in 2011 by the Northwest Bergen Mutual Aid Association for rescuing two victims from the Ramapo River during Hurricane Irene. Tim has received the ERDI “Outstanding Instructor Award” for 2016, 2017, 2018 and is the 2023 ERDI Ambassador!

John Bota

John is one of NePSD’s lead instructors and started his public safety career as a firefighter in 1985. John started his diving career in 2012 as “something to do with my son and daughter to stay connected”. This proved to not be enough, and they promised to get a new certification each year. In 2014 John joined the Parsippany Rescue and Recovery Squad and became a public safety diver in 2017. John’s dedication to the craft of public safety diving led him to be the dive coordinator for his team since 2018 and now shares this passion with his daughter Alexis who is the assistant dive coordinator. John’s role at NePSD has been unmatched since the beginning!! We have no words to describe his passion and dedication to our students and bettering himself as a diver. Besides being a UCI commander, Dive instructor for multiple agencies, and a major contributor to NePSD John has also run boat operations, logistics, staging and dive operations for not only our local jurisdiction but also for the FBI, US Coast Guard, NY and NJ Port Authority, and The Royal Canada Mounted Police.

Eric Moritz

Since starting his diving career Eric has dedicated himself to bettering himself as a diver in any way he can. Besides becoming a UCI commander, Dive instructor for multiple agencies, and a major contributor to NePSD, Eric and Tim also designed the consulting program based off the experiences they have had rebuilding not only Mahwah’s dive teams but many others throughout the US and Canada. This dedication to our craft of being a PSD has led Eric to be a major fixture within the command structure of the Mahwah dive team and the Bergen County dive taskforce. He has also run boat Opps, rigging Opps, extractions of all types, logistics, staging and dive operations for not only our local jurisdiction but also for the FBI, US Coast Guard, NY and NJ Port Authority, and The Royal Canada Mounted Police.

James Finneran

James Finneran is a SDI Divemaster and ERDI Supervisor, along with being an active firefighter for over a decade. James is exceptionally calm under pressure and is very good at talking students through problems and building their confidence.

James Warnet

James brings more than 15 years of firefighter experience and nearly a decade of dive experience to the team. He is a member of the Mahwah Fire & Rescue Co #1 Dive Rescue team, where he is a lead public safety diver, supervisor, and lead UCI diver. James is also a twice-certified law enforcement officer (former), and a graduate of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the FBI Advanced Police Course and the Bergen County Law and Public Safety Institute. His law enforcement experience, formal training on interview and interrogation, Constitutional law and evidence collection (from both Homeland Security and the FBI) make him an invaluable asset for crime scene operations, and teaching those skills for Underwater Crime Scene Investigator courses. James is also the resident webmaster and tech genius, and a freelance copywriter.

Linda Farkas

Linda started diving in 2014 and came over to the PSD side in 2017. She brings the extraordinarily unique perspective of being a female diver in this very male-dominated profession, which means she sometimes approaches situations with a different mindset than her male counterparts.

The Origin Story of Northeast Public Safety Divers

All From a Near-Disaster…

In 2012, a public safety diver, on a NJ fire department, entered a quarry searching for a victim. When he surfaced, he had sustained a decompression injury and was rushed to a hyperbaric chamber.

At the time, our eventual founder, Tim Andro, had been deep tech diving for approximately eight years and had logged around 800 dives. Most of them in the many shipwrecks that are scattered around the Jersey shore, at regular depths of 150’+.

Because of his experience as a diver and as a firefighter, Tim was asked to consult on the incident.

What he found was a team that lacked firm operational plans, ran with poorly serviced gear, and generally operated by the seat of their pants. They did not prioritize advanced training, and their regular training did not reflect how they actually operated at an incident.

It didn’t take long for Tim to decide that no public safety diver should ever have to spend time in a chamber, or worst-case die in the line of duty, from a lack of high-quality training.

So he did two things: he joined the bent diver’s team and rebuilt it, and committed himself to teaching public safety divers how to operate safer and be more effective at their tasks.

Fast-forward four years of buying equipment, putting the pieces together, and learning under two highly respected ERDI dive instructors (one from the FDNY Rescue 1 dive team and the other who trained the NYPD ESU dive team).

In 2016, Northeast Public Safety Divers was officially born.

Since then, the company has grown a lot. But we haven’t forgotten our roots.

We will put in whatever time and energy necessary to make sure students understand and can clearly demonstrate their skills. In certain cases, a student will receive one-on-one help from a staff diver dedicated to their learning.

Public safety diving is a dangerous and risky calling… But there are operation-tested procedures that can help reduce that risk and get divers home if the worst case happens.