SPECIALTY COURSE Search & Recovery 2 Days

Anyone who spends enough time near water is bound to lose something eventually. But with a Search and Recovery specialty diver at hand, nothing is ever really gone, it’s just wet! Small, large or just awkward, there is a way of finding what’s missing and surfacing it. During the course you’ll learn how to plan, organise and conduct search and recovery dives, get more experience with knot tying and using a lift bag, and practice some limited visibility search techniques. Besides the practical advantages, one of the most gratifying experiences in diving is setting out to find and recover a lost object – and succeeding.

Many factors can affect the success or failure of any search and recovery conducted underwater. Those of particular importance are surface conditions, underwater visibility, depth, bottom topography, bottom composition, vegetation, accessibility, surge, tides, currents, accuracy of bearings, water temperature, pollution, and obstacles or hazards. The size, weight, and dimensions of the object to recover also play a huge role.

The search and recovery dive team cannot control these factors. There is, in fact, one aspect of an underwater search and recovery that can be controlled – organization.

The other factors must be considered when the team plans a search and recovery, altering how they search and the recovery methods to accommodate them. Thus, the goal of this course is to teach student divers a systematic, methodical approach to the search and recovery of submerged objects