Steps to Public Safety diver...

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Kunk35

Contributor
Messages
390
Reaction score
22
Location
Texas
# of dives
200 - 499
I've always thought this might be an area I'd like to get into. I apologize if this has been asked before, I'm just not patient enough to go searching.....

What path should I be looking at to get into this area? Is it limited to police/firefighter personnel?

Have any of you gotten to a situation and made the decision not to make the dive? Either for safety reasons, or for emotional reasons?

Just curious about this area of diving knowledge.
 
Kunk35:
I've always thought this might be an area I'd like to get into. I apologize if this has been asked before, I'm just not patient enough to go searching.....

What path should I be looking at to get into this area? Is it limited to police/firefighter personnel?

Have any of you gotten to a situation and made the decision not to make the dive? Either for safety reasons, or for emotional reasons?

Just curious about this area of diving knowledge.
Wow, You need to do some searching. If you don’t have the patience to search for information you will not have the patience to do this work, period. There is way too much information about PSD here at SB to even think about getting it into one thread.

From your profile you should have plenty of patience. Being interested in computers and astronomy requires a good degree of it.

Most areas require that you be affiliated with a Public Service. If your not you can’t get most of the training that is offered. The training is not like sport diving at all. To stay current you need to recert every few years.

Not making a dive is nothing to be ashamed of. We all refuse to make a dive once in a while. If it doesn’t feel right it probley isn’t so don’t do it. Any diver, for any or no reason can refuse to make a dive anytime without be questioned or embarrassed about it. Peer Pressure is what kills a lot, if not most divers and PSD’s. Just because you’re a “Certified” PSD doesn’t make you a Super Hero with a mask and cape.

There are a lot of things to consider before making the step into PSD. Some are your own physical and MENTAL ability to cope with handling bodies and body parts in various stages of decomposition. Diving into waters polluted with everything from A to Z including Fossil fuels, raw sewage, decaying marine life (and humans) and anything else you can think up.

Some will think, Hummm All I want to do is search for weapons or evidence and not go after a body. That’s fine if your team knows that going in. But remember that can be a worse job. Every body of water has its pollutants. Some are minor while others are just flat gross. If you’re searching for an item, other than a body, on the bottom you might be digging anywhere from a few inches to several feet into that bottom silt. What do you think that silt is made up of? It’s all the polluted crap that has ever been in that water. And guess what, your playing in it.

There is a lot to think about before making the step from a sport newbe to PSD. We have had several peior team members that have quit and will never dive again because of what they saw or did underwater. This is not a Macho thing to brag about. It’s a very serious business that can not be taken lightly.

Please don’t feel like I’m picking on you because I’m not. Most on this forum know I WILL NOT sugar coat this job and I will try and let you know exactly what it’s like. You may get on a team and never get a call and only trains. Or you can be on a team that is constantly being called and for part of the year has to suspend training.

So Kunk35, take the time and do some searching through this PSD forum. There is a plethora of information and scenarios to read through. Also get a copy of the Encyclopedia of Underwater Investigations”. That may help you make a decision.

Good luck in whatever path you decide to take.

Gary D.
:wink:
 
Gary, thanks for the reply. After I read that patience line, I knew I'd get called on that. I just meant patience for computer searches....

I like that you aren't sugar coating. That's what I'm looking for in more information about this line of dive experiences. I'm not sure it's something I'd want to get into, hence the need for stories and advice from experienced people.

Tell me this, considering the emotional issues of what you do as a public service diver, and the water conditions with the pollutants, why do people do it? What is the driving factors of why you do this?

Again, I appreciate your reply. I'm very new to diving, and am just getting into all the different possibilities of what my future diving could include.
 
james croft:
We do it for the toys and the t-shirts !
:D Never thought of it that way but it's kind of true." :D

Gary D.
 
Gotta get something out of it. The pay sucks and if you find something you don't get to keep it.
 
Kunk35:
Gary, thanks for the reply. After I read that patience line, I knew I'd get called on that. I just meant patience for computer searches....

I like that you aren't sugar coating. That's what I'm looking for in more information about this line of dive experiences. I'm not sure it's something I'd want to get into, hence the need for stories and advice from experienced people.

Tell me this, considering the emotional issues of what you do as a public service diver, and the water conditions with the pollutants, why do people do it? What is the driving factors of why you do this?

Again, I appreciate your reply. I'm very new to diving, and am just getting into all the different possibilities of what my future diving could include.
Now that the "Patience" issue has been addressed :D

Over the past couple of years there have been a lot of informative posts from several areas of the world. Just scroll through the PSD titles and start reading some of them. Some were super easy while others had their moments. Like not being able to drive a real sharp straight pin up ones butt with a real big jackhammer.

Why do we do this? I don’t have a clue. My first one was a shipmate recovery while I was in the Navy. It was November 23,1966 in what was even by those days standards a very preventable accident. A few died and a few were injured but I was the one who made the recovery bobbing around in the middle of the South China Sea. For a 19-year-old snotty nose kid it was traumatic. I had just talked to him a little earlier and now I was looking into the empty shell that once held his brain. Talk about tossing cookies, I tossed up everything and then some.

I don’t know if that’s what started the path or not but I just can’t seem to let go of this business. We don’t do this for the victim. They aren’t going to care what we do because they’re gone. We do this for the survivors, friends and family.

On another recent thread the term “Closure” came up and I agree that there is really never any “Closure”. But we try and help ease the pain everyone is going through and make the grieving process easier and possible shorter.

Everyone has his or her own reason for doing this, but there needs to be a safety valve of some sort. Mine is that I forget the operation after just a few days. I mean I just put it in a far corner of my mind where it doesn’t come up all the time. Kids are a bit, ok, a lot tougher to do that with but you can’t dwell on it or you will be the one that goes to the funny farm.

Take some time and do some reading before you commit to anything.

Good luck

Gary D.
 
Thank-you again Gary for the reply. It gives me alot to think about along with that article from the link up above. That's exactly what I was looking for though, because alot of what was in that link, I hadn't considered. I think one thing I may try to do is contact the local PSD's in my area and listen to their stories of what they have been through.

Keep in mind, I'm just in the early stages of recreational diving. I realize the training and commitment to go into something like this is enormous. But, like all things worthwhile, you have to start somewhere. The more info I get, the less I may want to do this, or, the more it may make we willing to commit to it. I'll admit, that article raised alot of points to think about. It sounds like a very unselfish, non-glamourous, dangerous lifestyle...

Thanks guys for the insight!
 
Kunk35:
Thank-you again Gary for the reply. It gives me alot to think about along with that article from the link up above. That's exactly what I was looking for though, because alot of what was in that link, I hadn't considered. I think one thing I may try to do is contact the local PSD's in my area and listen to their stories of what they have been through.

Keep in mind, I'm just in the early stages of recreational diving. I realize the training and commitment to go into something like this is enormous. But, like all things worthwhile, you have to start somewhere. The more info I get, the less I may want to do this, or, the more it may make we willing to commit to it. I'll admit, that article raised alot of points to think about. It sounds like a very unselfish, non-glamourous, dangerous lifestyle...

Thanks guys for the insight!

I wrote that (the link) for a Wages Review Board a while back and I did forget about it.

Every team and every area is different so everyone has to be adaptable to what is needed. This job is only as dangerous as the team makes it and is fairly safe if you stay with the Risk vs Benefit concept.

Glamorous? When we are done with an operation if I can’t be with my team mates I just want to leave. I can’t stand 90% of the media vultures there. :mooner: Even on the operation Friday morning they just had to get pictures of the body on TV. Sure there was a blanket blocking him but they zoomed in trying to get any little peek they could. So when it’s over I’m out of there.

I will even avoid the family and their friends if possible. I’ve done my job now let me get on with my life. I just don’t want to get personal with the victim or the survivors. Doing that makes them harder to return to normal.

Lifestyle, it is that if your dedicated. Pick your path wisely and don’t let it ruin your fun diving.

Gary D.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom