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How to Rescue a Lost Ice Diver

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Do you remember the first time you donned SCUBA gear and took your first breath underwater? Do you remember that indescribable feeling of amazement and wonder?

Well, diving under the ice is just like that.

With good visibility and light, you can look up and watch the bubbles play across the ice above you. The cracks and creaks of the ice shelf give the water a music-like quality. It is just, indescribable. 

But ice diving comes with a unique safety issue that shares much more in common with cave diving than it does no-overhead diving: you can’t just surface if there is an issue, and the potential of losing your only exit from the ice is both very real, and very possible.

Table Of Contents

Ice Diving Safety

Many divers are under the impression that simply looking up will allow them to find the hole they entered through, and they can just make their way out. That is not the case and should not be relied upon as a safety measure.

So what safety procedures are in place to protect divers under the ice?

In line with ERDI standards, and our own safety standards, we continually reinforce the concept that divers in any NePSD Ice Diver Class will never enter the water without a locking carabiner tether in the locked position. Safety divers wait on the surface, tether attached, and divers are tethered before entering the water.

This importance cannot be understated, as that tether can often be the only thing that will reliably get a lost diver back to the surface. Without that route back to the entry hole, a diver could conceivably drift or wander in any direction and never get back to the surface. 

In Public Safety Diving, though, one safety is never enough.

What Happens if an Ice Diver Loses That Tether

So what happens if a diver’s tether becomes unclipped? What does a diver do if their only lifeline suddenly disappears and they don’t realize it before that lifeline slips away? What does topside do when the tether line goes slack and a diver stops responding? Where should they look first to ensure they get that diver back before the diver runs out of air?

All great questions, and we’re going to show you what to do.

So we’re clear, any operation that is a rescue effort for a live victim will be worked according to the conditions presented. In those situations, the primary goal is to save a life and for that to occur, speed and efficiency is key. 

In this article, we will be addressing non-rescue operations (recovery of some sort, or training). These operations afford the greatest degree of safety for divers because we have all the time necessary to properly plan the operation and arrange the required support for a safe dive.

The Safety Equation: Ice Diver Planning 

As we’ve mentioned, ice diving is far more reliant on tether limitations than other forms of PSD diving and the operation needs to be established carefully on that fact (this will become clearer in a moment). When discussing ice diving, never forget that the tether is absolutely show-stoppingly critical. 

So, to make sure we’re clear, under no circumstances should divers enter ice conditions without a tether. Nothing is worth a diver’s life and we can’t rescue victims if we can’t locate the exit hole.

Now, when the dive location is chosen (or, in the event of a recovery, chosen for us) a hot zone needs to be established and proper ice safety procedures followed (a topic for another discussion). Test holes should be cut and the depth of the water sounded so the depth becomes a mostly-known variable. 

Why is this important?

First, because we’re standing on the ice directly over the dive location. Sounding takes minutes, requires gear that is virtually free, and is exceptionally easy to do, so, why not? Second, we need to know the operational limits of the divers based on the dive location and plan the operation accordingly. 

Determining Operational Limits of Ice Divers

To explain this better, let’s come at it from the safety standpoint. 

In the event that a diver becomes lost and untethered (worst-case scenario that can easily turn life-threatening) the correct procedure is for the lost diver to slowly ascend to the ice sheet, taking care to keep a hand over their head and not crash into the ice. Once the diver arrives at the ice sheet, they should inflate their BC to keep them against the ice, ditch their weight belt, place both hands against the ice and “get big”, meaning make themselves as big as possible. If they are carrying an ice screw, they should screw this in and secure themselves to the screw.

This lost diver is now a 5-6’ tall obstruction against the ice surface. At this point, they wait and trust that help is coming. The lost diver should NOT attempt to locate the hole if they cannot see it immediately. Doing so may result in the lost diver traveling in the wrong direction and eliminating any chance of finding them. Remaining stationary is critical.

Once the emergency situation becomes clear, all unnecessary surface operations cease and the safety diver is deployed. Because of the very high danger factor with ice diving, recovering the lost diver becomes the only operational concern. The Dive Supervisor will determine the lost diver’s most likely direction and inform the safety diver.

The safety diver will submerge, but only far enough to get under the ice. At this point, the safety diver will either swim or ice-pick their way in the direction of the lost diver, ensuring they stay against the ice sheet. At a predetermined point, topside will signal the safety diver to stop and begin their sweep.

Million dollar question: what is this predetermined point?  

Ice Diving Operational Planning – Working Depth

Let’s pause this procedure and get back to the dive planning so we can understand this distance.

After the operational area is established and the depth is determined, the Dive Supervisor should establish the maximum distance a working diver will be allowed to travel away from the hole. For all you math majors out there, this formula is a triangle and the depth plays a key role in the fixed travel length of the working diver. 

For example, if the working depth is 30’ then the Supervisor may fix the maximum tether distance at 50’ total from the surface. This will allow the working diver to reach the bottom (30’ of tether) and extend out in a search pattern (approximately 40’ in any direction). Or, at 15’ of working depth, a fixed tether length of 35’ feet will allow the working diver to extend 30’ in any direction. 

This working distance is critical to understand because, in the event that the working diver becomes untethered and lost, they will surface to the ice sheet as discussed. The safety diver’s tether needs to be 2x the length of the working diver’s tether to ensure a quick location and rescue. If the working depth is not established, then the safety diver may be swimming much further than necessary to perform their sweep, fatiguing the safety diver and extending the period of time before the lost diver may be located.

For instance, if the working depth is only 30’ but the working diver is allowed to take out 100’ of tether, then the safety diver must extend out 200’ in order to ensure the lost diver is found. 

So how does this sweep and rescue actually happen? 

Locating and Rescuing a Lost Ice Diver

Getting back to our lost diver safety procedure, we now know how the predetermined length of tether line is calculated (2x maximum length of working diver’s tether), and we also know that the lost diver is hopefully “getting big” on the ice sheet waiting for rescue. 

Once the safety diver reaches their predetermined distance, topside will signal them to stop and begin their sweep. That sweep amounts to nothing more complex than swimming left, or right, against their tether line, using it as the fixed center of a circle. Provided the tender keeps the safety diver’s tether tight, the safety diver will begin circling the entrance hole.

Assuming there is no current, the lost diver performed all procedures as trained, and the safety diver swims directly under the ice, the safety diver’s tether will eventually catch on the 5-6’ tall obstruction that is the lost diver. At that point, the lost diver should begin giving pull signals on the safety diver’s tether (preferably the team’s recognized signal for “IN” or “take up line”). 

The safety diver, having felt the pull signals, will begin moving toward the tether until making contact with the lost diver. The safety diver will assess the lost diver and both divers will return to the entrance together.

Ice Diving is Amazing

Ice diving is the sort of activity that is unforgettable. There are so many new facets to diving under the ice that it amounts to the difference in experience between breath-hold diving and SCUBA diving. 

With that wonder and awe comes a whole realm of critically important safety measures that must be in place in order to ensure all divers return to the surface to tell their tale. In the event that Murphy’s law kicks in, divers need to be prepared and ready to execute the safety procedures to get the lost diver back.

These safety procedures are just a single piece of the ice diving pie which we will be covering in future articles.

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Dive Team Budgeting

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The Thing Divers Fear More Than Never Diving Again – Paying For It All

Whether its recreational diving or public safety diving, diving, in general, is expensive. Do you start with the top of the line stuff that may be too expensive and technical for your team to use? Do you go with the cheap set just to get your team started? What’s worth the coin and what is worth cutting a few bucks on? Train with the expensive instructor or just get the card and figure out the rest with the cheaper class?

No wonder team administrators suddenly wish they were just back on the line. 

Cheap is Expensive

Let’s face it, the majority of gear and equipment in the diving world gets beat up. Between the diving environment, the operational tempo, and the fact that many public safety divers feel a hammer is an effective tool for ‘fixing’ any problem, and you get a recipe for constantly replacing expensive stuff.

So should a team buy cheap stuff that is easier to replace? Or buy more expensive gear that may last just a little longer in the field?

Well, when you need to replace something a few times a year, or every year because you went with the lesser of the two items, you’re ultimately spending that money twice. If you just got the better of the two, the slightly more pricey but purpose-built one it would have lasted longer.

Let’s look at an example.

As far as we are concerned, drysuits should be a standard part of any public safety dive team’s equipment list. After all, every dive should be considered contaminated water. A fairly decent drysuit can be sized and purchased for around $1,100, and that drysuit will definitely keep a diver dry during operations. Or, if your team operates almost entirely in temperate waters, why not a wetsuit? 

A PSD specific drysuit, like the ones that NePSD staff members use on a regular basis during all our operations, can run a team as high as $3,200 each when properly equipped with kevlar reinforced wear points, inner dams, and reinforced thigh pockets for necessary gear.

Is the $3,200 drysuit really worth nearly three of the cheaper suits? We just established that the cheaper suit will keep a diver dry, so it would seem like the more prudent option is to equip three divers for the price of one. Right?

Well, when a diver is belly to the bottom, crawling along searching for a gun, how many sharp objects do you think they’ll encounter? How many pieces of broken glass or fishing lures do you suppose they’ll kneel on in a given operation? And after crawling through all that likely-polluted sediment, how well do you think the cheaper suit will decon? 

Drysuits are the diver’s first barrier to injury, exposure and contamination. That suit, along with the requisite other sealed barriers, could easily be the difference between needing to clean your gear after unfortunately swimming through sewage, and having to clean the sewage of yourself. 

What about cheap dive training? 

Again, full disclosure, NePSD is a training facility and we market public safety dive certifications. Our prices are in line with market prices, and those market prices are hardly what one would consider cheap. 

So why should a team choose the ‘expensive’ training instead of the “sign and dive event price”?

There isn’t a whole lot of space needed for this one. 

Learn PSD from PSD’s

There is an irreconcilable difference between learning your trade from someone who has only experienced dive conditions that are ‘acceptable’ and learning it from someone who has spent their fair share of time in 40-degree water that has zero visibility looking for a body that has been down there for a month. Anyone who has been in that spot can tell you that the first time they went there was decidedly different than they expected. 

Recognize that your training is to keep you alive first and complete the mission second

Many things can go wrong on a live operation, and the situation itself can sometimes be the least of your concerns. The dive environment is almost guaranteed to be the worst possible conditions, and if you are properly equipped, you’ll be weighed down with primary air, secondary air, tools, detectors, cutting devices, harness, etc. The list goes on. 

Good instructors will teach you how to properly accomplish your mission in the most efficient and effective way possible. Excellent instructors will make sure you can do that, while also being able to calmly respond to the sorts of problems that can claim your life. 

The first may just want your money, but it’s a sure bet the second won’t let you have that card until they are certain you can manage the myriad of life-threatening issues that you will inevitably face. 

That comes at a cost.

“Great. So how exactly do we afford this stuff?”

An excellent question!

You may think that this article is written from our gold house with money falling from the sky, and we so wish it was. Unfortunately, it isn’t. 

Some of the NePSD staff, myself and our founder Tim Andro included, had the fortune of inheriting a public safety dive team in the throes of its demise. After a very serious near-miss dive mishap, and the subsequent investigation, the team was nearly defunct and in serious need of some loving attention. Along with being defunct, the teams budget had been almost entirely dedicated elsewhere, and there was no hope of getting it back. Equipment was in unserviceable condition, maintenance hadn’t been performed in a long while, nearly everything leaked, and many divers had just stopped training. 

Today, five years later, that team has been reborn into one of the leading teams in the NYC area, and was a key part of a brand new multi-agency task force.

Here’s what we learned.

Develop over the years  

  • Before jumping whole-hog into everything, and trying to crack that enormous spending nut that would get the entire team back up the speed, we broke everything down into the smallest pieces we could manage. The gear in the best shape was sent for service, and the most qualified and willing divers were chosen to use that gear. With just that step, we were able to field a few divers with serviceable gear. The rest fell into a five-year plan of replacement and training, where we chose those items that were expensive, but reliable, and spreading them out to lessen the pain.

Go cheap where it makes sense

  • There are plenty of things that could be awesome and expensive, but cheap and ‘ok’ works too. Think knives, shears, gear storage, gear carabiners, etc. Don’t buy the $80 knives that twist lock-in, or look good on your leg. Let’s face it, the chance of you getting your knife back in the sheath in zero viz is slim to none. If you tether it and say “ok I’ll put it back in when I get top side” you have a chance of getting stuck with it and creating a bigger issue. Just ditch it and move on. Yep. Throw it away. Gear storage can be simple PVC racks, and unless there is a life on the end of the carabiner, the cheap hardware store clips will work just fine for clipping gear together.

Approach your funding body with the correct terminology

Want to see a dive coordinator get really nervous? Send them in front of their governing body to ask for money.

When approaching the administration for keeping, adding, or creating a budget for a dive team there are some key ways to explain the purchase. 

Who doesn’t like examples?

“Sir, the dive team really needs new drysuits so our diver’s don’t get wet.” 

OR

“Sir, as you know, our dive team provides dive rescue services for approximately 60 square miles. Last year we experienced 20 deployments, recovered four drowning victims and assisted our law enforcement partners in recovering critical evidence. Unfortunately, our personal protective equipment is reaching the end of its service life and cannot be relied upon to keep our divers safe or in compliance with NFPA 1670.” 

When telling an administration that items are needed, require service, or need to be updated to keep members safe they will have a much harder time knocking it down. The reality is Personal Protective Equipment is what keeps us safe and just about everything we use is considered PPE. 

Let’s look at another example.

“I looked over your proposal and saw that the cost to service this equipment seems really high. Your budget for service is more than what we spend to service the police department’s equipment. I’m not sure I understand why this is so expensive.”
[Administrator]
“I can certainly understand your confusion, as I would likely have thought the same thing. Unfortunately, our equipment has high service costs because it is considered life-support equipment. When our divers are subsurface, the gear they carry literally keeps them alive breath to breath, so the technicians who service the gear need to be specially trained and certified, with special tools, and all the gear needs to meet very strict specifications to guarantee that it will not fail during operation and potentially kill our divers.”
[You]
“Oh.”
[Administrator]

Money = safety

We all know that diving is an expensive hobby and a ridiculously expensive job. The amount of gear that fully-staffed dive teams have on hand means the value of the contents of their dive truck can easily exceed 10x the value of the vehicle itself. And all that gear exists for one reason: safety. Ignoring safety, or requiring that divers operate with unsafe equipment can lead to substantial liability and potentially tragic results. 

The Standards

When you come to the negotiating table, you need to make sure that you come armed with facts and documents backing your requests up. If you come with nothing you might get nothing. After all, you can say you need this or that but without a reason to back it up, it’s a hard sell. Along with the proper terminology and the proper mindset, your administration needs to consider the current standards.

Public safety diving now falls under the NFPA (specifically 1006 and 1670). These standards include equipment, training, and annual recertification requirements. And they are spelled out in very clear terms that leave little room for ‘interpretation’. So if you’re asked about the budget or to prove the budget on items that administration may not agree with or question, there is much more to consider when an operational standard spells it out.

The new NFPA standards provide for a good number of things, so let’s look at a quick piece.

“Select and use PPE, given a subsurface mission and personal protective and life-support equipment, so that rescuer is protected from temperature extremes and environmental hazards, correct buoyancy is maintained, AHJ protocols are complied with, swimming ability is maximized, routine and emergency communications are established between components of the team, self-rescue needs have been evaluated and provided for, predive safety checks have been conducted, and the diver returns to the surface with no less than the minimum specified reserve primary air supply pressure.”

Reading this part of the standard (which applies to the technician-level of dive rescue operations), we can pick out that the standard identifies personal protective equipment and life-support equipment as a basic provision, and that this PPE will protect the diver from temperature extremes and environmental hazards. While we suppose someone could make a case that a wetsuit fits the first requirement, only a drysuit can satisfy both requirements.

Further, the standard requires a primary (routine) and secondary (emergency) means of communication. For PSD’s, the primary would likely be integrated voice communications (which requires a full-face mask) and the secondary could be satisfied via rope line signals.

Finally, this section requires that self-rescue needs are evaluated and provided for. This could be interpreted to mean a secondary air source, or it could be interpreted to mean cutting devices, harnesses, etc. Better yet, it could be both.

“The ability to use PPE, including full-face mask equipment and redundant air systems…”
NFPA 1006-77 18.3.6 B

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Certainly spells it out, doesn’t it?

Dive Team Budgeting Will Always Be a Work In Progress

There’s no way around the fact that diving is impressively expensive and someone has to foot the bill in order to field public safety dive teams. Without funding, the team does not exist. Without the team, dive rescues and recoveries cannot happen. The public loses a valuable resource and divers don’t get to do the things that they do best, including saving lives.

We’ve covered just a few ways to tackle the budget issue that plagues nearly every dive team we’ve ever spoken to, and ways you can possibly approach a governing body for more or better funding. Don’t forget that perception is everything and your administration may not share your perception simply because they don’t know. Part of your role in the great budget game is to educate them into exactly why you need X number of dollars for Y reason, and why that reason will cost so much.

We cannot, in good conscience, recommend that the path of least resistance is to simply dive with substandard gear or poor training. The dive environment will kill experienced divers as fast as it will kill new divers, and when the brown stuff hits the spinning blades, you may only get a single breath to solve that problem or find another breath.

It will take time to build, but trust us, it is worth it.

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A Recreational Dive Certification is not Enough for Public Safety Diving

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Time and time again we see teams who feel that a basic open water certification is enough to perform the duties of a public safety diver. They feel that recreational training is enough to justify the diver as being competent in performing their job. 

It’s time to address a painful truth: a recreational dive certification, or even multiple certifications, does not a public safety diver make.

Full disclosure, NePSD is a public safety dive training center. We offer a wide range of certification courses, to include Scuba Diving International (SDI) and Emergency Response Diving International (ERDI). All of our certification courses are taught by certified instructors who can issue certification cards for their respective agencies. So, It would seem we have a vested interest in ‘selling’ public safety dive certifications. 

Far from it.  

NePSD has a vested interest in the advancement of safe public safety diving practices, regardless of where the training takes place. The public safety diving community feels every single diver loss, and we should all be striving towards eliminating every tragedy through good training, equipment, SOPs/SOGs and standing our ground when the conditions do not warrant diving.

With that out of the way, what separates recreational diving from public safety diving?

Table Of Contents

Let’s start where the rubber meets the road – the dive environment

Who doesn’t love diving in the Caribbean? 70’ of visibility, calm waters, gorgeous scenery and 75 degrees of water temp at 80 feet. Diver’s paradise.

85′ Down in Cozumel

The public safety dive environment is about as far in the other direction as one can get. Here in the northeast U.S. (home of NePSD), our primary public safety dive environment is cold year round, pitch black and full of entanglements and overhead hazards.

Many of our local rivers are choked with trash, broken glass, fish hooks, trees, even whole vehicles; and if that isn’t fun enough, many of them also have a deep layer of contaminated sediment on the bottom, courtesy of decades of manufacturing pollution. While dodging all those hazards, the dive team also has to contend with rapidly changing tidal conditions that can spawn 6+ knots of current in just a few minutes.  

Lakes and reservoirs carry a far lower incidence of unexpected current and a much greater degree of sudden changes in depth and much colder water.

Outside of our area, and even in the best of conditions, public safety divers are entering the water for a purpose that generally involves something (or someone) being in the water when they shouldn’t be. This could be submerged vehicles leaking fluids, corpses at varying degrees of decomposition, or locating potentially dangerous evidence like firearms and knives. 

In short, unless you’re a public safety diver (we’re all a little crazy), there is absolutely nothing appealing about these dive conditions and even with the proper gear, dives are a race against time before the conditions wear a diver down to the point of unsafe operations. We are there because we have to be there.

Recreational dive certifications, by virtue of their purpose, focus on safely bringing divers to places they want to be, under conditions they can endure comfortably, so they can enjoy their dive.

NePSD Staff in 6′ of water (Hudson River). The red arrow is a dive light on the head of another diver an arm’s distance away.

In short, unless you’re a public safety diver (we’re all a little crazy), there is absolutely nothing appealing about these dive conditions and even with the proper gear, dives are a race against time before the conditions wear a diver down to the point of unsafe operations. We are there because we have to be there.

Recreational dive certifications, by virtue of their purpose, focus on safely bringing divers to places they want to be, under conditions they can endure comfortably, so they can enjoy their dive.

If the diving is awful, then why are public safety divers even in the water?

Since we’re talking about why we’re in the water, let’s get back to the mission.

Public safety divers are entering the water to accomplish a specific task, be it locating something or someone, or recovering something or someone. Nearly all of these tasks involve items that are hazardous to divers, and yet those divers need to get very up-close and personal with these items.

Corpses in varying states of decomposition can excrete all manner of bodily fluids, and be in multiple pieces. Animal activity can further complicate the situation, and once you add in cold, dark water, the diver can be blindly groping their way through recovering pieces of a partially decomposed corpse. 

There is no sugar-coating that mission; someone has to do it and there is nothing fun about it.

Recovering that body takes special skills not taught in the recreational realm, and for good reason. Remember, recreational divers are in the water for enjoyment.

The dope on a rope

How many recreational divers were trained to dive with a tether? Better yet, trained to go in agonizingly slow circles or arcs depending on the number of tugs on that tether? 

The procedures of the public safety diver are generally ours alone, and we can hit them very succinctly here:

  • We generally dive solo and tethered
  • We almost always hug the bottom tightly
  • In the event of obstructions, entanglements or problems we are trained to stop, assess the problem, and execute a solution on the spot
  • We dive in all conditions when required. Rain, snow, ice, blistering hot day, middle of the night, etc. When needed, we respond.
  • In the event that the primary diver becomes entangled/has a problem/needs help, a second/third/fourth diver is deployed as needed to assist with whatever that problem may be. We are trained to trust each other with our very lives, and we often do.

Public safety dive certifications tie this mission together with standards and procedures

So why can’t we just say “I have 1,000 tec dives, I can do this mission”? 

Well, for the same reason a car commercial showing a sleek muscle car speeding through the streets has to have “professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt” on the screen in small letters. 

Lawyers.

Recognized Dive Standards

In today’s world of liability, one of the best ways to protect yourself, your team and your employer is to attain a recognized certification and dive to that standard. Programs such as the ones offered by ERDI are backed by industry-recognized dive procedures and practices, much the same way as other more risky industries. 

In the event of a lawsuit against you, having the ability to testify that you were taught X, Y and Z procedure, by X certification agency, and you operated strictly within those standards, means a better defense against fault. More importantly, those standards are designed and vetted external to your agency, so the veracity and effectiveness of those procedures is not up to you to defend provided you were within the standards.

Similarly, if a public safety diver is injured or killed operating outside standards, the employing agency can face significant fines or even have their entire team shut down. 

The best defense is to operate within the standards and procedures of an internationally-recognized dive certification agency. Anything short of that places team members, and their employing agency, at risk of substantial liability in the event of severe injuries or deaths.

The public safety diver’s role in legal proceedings

Public safety divers may find themselves intentionally, or inadvertently, in the position of having to testify in a court of law. More critical, these divers may have been operating under the mandate of collecting evidence in a criminal case and the manner that the evidence was recovered will inevitably come under intense legal scrutiny during the judicial process, mostly as a means of having critical evidence tossed out and preventing prosecution.

When recovering bodies underwater, for instance, public safety divers must be trained to properly preserve trace evidence in the event that the body was the result of a homicide. Failure to do so, or failing to do so in a legally acceptable manner, may result in the evidence being excluded at trial or being so contaminated as to be rendered forensically useless. 

A critical piece of the public safety diver’s role in this process is being able to testify to the correct procedures in collecting evidence and how those procedures were followed in that particular case. For instance, the diver must be aware of, and follow, the proper chain of custody; marking, photographing and sketching of objects or bodies is crucial before physically manipulating the item; and packaging evidence securely in a container with the water the item was found in, among many others.

In order to effectively testify to this information, diver’s need to be able to demonstrate their knowledge of the procedures along with the certification to show they were trained in proper collection. This is the diver-equivalent of the difference between a forensic technician collecting fingerprints and an office worker using a piece of tape to collect fingerprints ‘like they do on TV’. In one event, the evidence will be accepted and verified and in the other, laughably excluded.   

The underwater world is one of the very few places that an average evidence technician cannot go. Short of a dive-trained technician or law enforcement officer, the public safety diver has exclusive access.

Evidence recoveries require careful coordination with law enforcement, both for resources and also to ensure proper chain of custody.

Recreational diving can take you many places but public safety diving just isn’t one of them

There is no getting around the fact that public safety diver’s need the proper training and certification that is specific to our field. It is entirely unrealistic to think that a recreational background, even an extensive one, will translate all the skills and requirements needed to fill the public safety diver role, not to mention the enormous liability that would convey to the team and employer. 

Is it worth ruining the chance at successful prosecution and watching a potentially guilty person go free?

Is it worth suffering through years of litigation and seeing your team shut down because “we’ve done it this way forever, why change now?”

Is it worth risking your life not to seek the proper training and certifications?

The answer is ‘no’ to all of those in case you were wondering.

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We Just Love Training

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This may be one of my favorite pics. Who says “no diving” !! It was a great day in the pool the students all did amazing and a gigantic thank you to the guys who came out and helped!!!

I don’t do this often but felt very proud when I saw this picture. If you look closely you can see the instructor in the front getting ready to do face mask drills, students in the middle doing gear checks before drill starts, and our amazing staff right behind them ready to assist.

We are big believers in the smallest student to staff ratio we can get. It is always our goal to have one of our staff with no more than two divers. It’s proven to be safe and extremely productive, both during the actual dives and during debriefing later. This ratio really allows the student to feel comfortable and stay busy with very little downtime throughout the day.

ERDI – Public Safety Diving

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