NCJ Number
226852
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 36 Issue: 4 Dated: April 2009 Pages: 58,60,63
Date Published
April 2009
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article describes innovative equipment technology for public safety dive teams, providing increased safety to divers.
Abstract
Public safety dive teams are classified as a law enforcement unit equipped and trained to perform a variety of location and recovery operations. Public safety dives fall into three recovery classifications, body recovery, vehicle recovery, and evidence recovery. Each of these presents specific contaminant concerns and challenges to the dive team. Today, divers can perform these demanding and challenging operations safely due to new technological breakthroughs in equipment design and development. This article describes some of the technological advances protecting public safety divers from inhaling airborne particles or ingesting droplets of contaminated water, excessive cold exposure, and skin exposure to water contaminants. These technological advances include dry suits, full face mask designs (Interspiro Divator MKII), and surface supplied air delivery units, as well as other specialized equipment, such as scan sonar systems, remotely operated vehicles (unmanned submarine units), and underwater magnetometers.