On the Wednesday of the Panama City Mission, we went to tour the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center. The Navy Dive School is where they train divers from all stretches of the world, to do technical work underwater. When divers come to the Naval Dive School, they learn how to do underwater maintenance and use different types of SCUBA systems.
Nauts on the Panama City, FL trip toured the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center.
When we went to tour the dive school it was absolutely amazing! We got to see divers preparing to train in the pool, go out on boats, and other training activities and exercises. But let me back it up to the beginning of the tour.
We first got went to the auditorium to hear a speech about what the dive school did, we were introduced to many new things that people can do with SCUBA diving. From different types of helmets to work you can do underwater. There were things like underwater welding and patching ships to deep diving for missions of sorts. We learned that a lot of people go to the dive school and from everywhere and every branch. People from ally countries train there, pilots and soldiers go there, and law enforcement! They all have different uses for this training. But what does the training entail??
Emma tries on a commercial diving helmet weighing more than 35lbs
Pool Week and Hits
There are multiple courses and multiple types of training at the dive school (it is the largest in the United States). One of their training parts is Pool Week. There is a forty foot deep pool at the dive center where they get trained and have these things called hits. There’s light hits, moderate hits, and heavy hits. Light hits are on the easier side to recover from, probably just getting your regulator ripped out of your mouth or your mask being taken off but nothing too insane. Moderate hits are a little worse such as turning your air off, your regulator being ripped out, and mask off (there may be more depending on the instructor). Heavy hits are the worst of the worst. They turn of your air rip your regulator out and tangle them take your mask off, undo the BCD buckles, and other issues.
Underwater Construction and Salvage
Another activity they do would be in the underwater construction area where they would have a makeshift ship called the mud monster and it would be destroyed and they would have to go under and patch it and drain the water from it so it could be used again. The trainees would also pour concrete underwater and then in the underwater demolition area other people would destroy those.
The trainees would also go to the diving simulation, to simulate deeper depths without actually going to that depth. Most of the divers get narcosis in this and our tour guide said something along the lines of everyone gets a little giggly in the chamber. They also can use it to treat diving illnesses like the bends although they do not treat that often.
Altogether it was amazing seeing how Navy divers train. It opened new doors for me and other nauts and gave me some insights on what the world of diving can entail.
Emma C., Naut-in-Training, Tampa Chapter
