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Dive supervisor: Green Diver, enter the water when ready.
We stood up the lockers with just a scuba diving capability because that’s all the Coast Guard had as collateral duty.
Now that we’re full time divers, it’s the natural progression to be safer and more capable by introducing this surface supplied diving equipment
like the extreme lightweight dive system (XLDS) that we’re fielding here.
We started realizing that we weren’t able to do all the missions that we needed to do, so we started looking at new equipment that could do those missions.
For instance, the contaminated water protection for the divers as well as some of the things that require a hard hat to dive
and using some underwater tools and cutting ability underwater.
Scuba is just like what you would do recreationally on a vacation, you’re carrying your air on your back.
You’re limited to only the air you have on your back and the skills you bring with you.
With Surface supplied diving, you have a tank on your back just in case,
but you have an unlimited air supply coming to you from the surface.
So, the diver himself really has an entire team of people topside to take care of any
issues or help them get through any problems there are down below.
That’s why it’s so important to have that surface supplied capability. It’s much, much safer.
This particular equipment provides, the hard hat and surface supplied gear, allows us to completely encapsulate the divers
and protect them from the water they’re diving in, in case there’s moderately or heavily contaminated waters.
For instance, oil or biological contaminations in the water.
For instance, Hurricane Sandy, in the aftermath. We didn’t have this equipment,
if we had this equipment, we would have been a very viable option to be used to go in afterwards and help with some of the recovery.
So you can rely on the divers to use their own skills as much as they need to down there, but they’re not alone.
They’re supported completely by topside personnel with unlimited air supplies and the ability to call in other people and resources.
Scuba divers don’t have that. So, we’re improving our safety tremendously.