JT2
Guest
I got to watch one of our local Public Safety dive teams practice today, and was I ever surprised! They did have on some nice looking flourescent orange drysuits, but from there it got way worse, they had old Sherwood jacket style BC's on and they were all using Air2's instead of a regular back up. Also, when they were practicing doing evidence searches there was only one diver in the water at a time, they did have what they called a back up diver ready to go in the water, I guess they splash the back up if they don't see bubbles coming from the primary diver anymore, however, they did have a rope tied to the diver in the water, which I might add got tangled up many many times. When it was time to practice wearing doubles, they brought out the two sets of doubles they had and on both sets there was only one first stage attached, and it was on the divers left side, no long hose, and they still used the Air2's. The tanks were connected using isolation manifolds, but the only thing on the valve on the right side was a valve plug, and the most interesting thing was the way they had the doubles rigged to the old Sherwood BC's. I am not an expert or extremely experienced diver, but I can tell you that these guys were horrible divers, and when I talked to a few of them, they stated that since they had become rescue divers they had not been in the water, but they were out thre today because they are required to go out a few times a year to keep their skills up...haha...Oh yea, another thing I thought was interesting was that out of the three I talked to, none of them had more than 30 logged dives, including training dives, how is this possible? Is this the norm around the country or was this group just a bad example?