This week Bruce Adams head of the police national dive squad gave us an insight of his 28 years with this team of divers. The team was formed in the 1970s and have an average of 70 deployments every year throughout New Zealand, well over one each week.
There are five full-time members of the team with another 10 on call or part-time. Their work is to save lives, support safety in the water, help with underwater crime scenes and to search for and recover bodies. Around 20 bodies a year are recovered from those who have drowned.
The diving is in all water from clean seawater to sewage ponds, so a lot of ‘kit’ is used for diving. This requires full face masks, a variety of radio communication and cameras along with a variety of other equipment. Much of the diving is in limited or no visibility.
Training themselves and others takes up quite a lot of their time and the squad was about to leave to board one of the inter-island ferries at sea. This was not to avoid having to pay for a ticket, it was for a practice rescue if helicopters could not be used in case of an emergency.
It was good to hear that such competent and professional police are involved in this work.