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Divers have been recovering lost souls and

equipment as long as humans have had lungs or

primitive equipment to enable them to journey

beneath the water’s surface. Not long after Emile Gagnan

and Jacques Cousteau invented and tested the first Aqua

Lung, it was demonstrated that it could be used for

military as well as civilian applications. In his landmark

book The Silent World, Cousteau writes of the recovery of

the remains of a pilot who crashed his aircraft not far from

where Cousteau’s dive team was operating.

Soon after the first scuba equipment made its way to the

United States, the first fledgling steps toward public safety

diving were taken when volunteer divers were sought out

by municipalities needing the support of underwater-

capable searchers and recovery experts. Generally, within

or near a one-hour threshold of an in-water incident,

the operation is considered a potential “rescue” by fire

departments or other public safety divers. After that

Origins of NAUI’s Public Safety Diver Program

period, or when the incident is obviously connected to a

crime, police department dive teams enter the operation.

Prior to the invention of scuba, traditional surface-

supply methods were used that required significant

training and large amounts of support equipment on-

site. With the arrival of scuba, divers could be far more

mobile and flexible in their approaches to an operation. As

the popularity of sport diving grew, many organizations

found that they had recreational divers on their payrolls. It

was a logical step for them to assume that their own divers

might fulfill this critical role, and the public safety diver

(PSD) was born.

The challenge of this paradigm is that very few sport

or recreational divers are trained in the demanding

environments often encountered during the average public

safety dive; nor are they trained in the exacting survival

and investigatory techniques required by this rapidly

growing niche of diving. Only rarely is a given search-

By Terrence Tysall, NAUI 16627, Director of Training

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and-recovery area similar to the kind of environments

encountered in a recreational scuba class or vacation

destination. Often, the recreationally trained divers found

themselves sorely lacking in basic survival skills or facing

angry investigators or plaintiffs’ attorneys questioning the

way in which they conducted the search or recovery.

NAUI’s involvement in public safety diving began when

individually qualified instructors around the world began

submitting outlines to teach various forms of public safety

diving. Because this was initially done under the auspices

of the NAUI Instructor Specified Specialty program, each

instructor’s approach to the topic was highly individualized.

As the number of instructors offering this type of training

increased, it became evident that both convergent and

divergent instructional evolution were occurring, and it was

time for guidance and greater oversight from NAUI itself.

In 2014, the NAUI Board of Directors established a PSD

advisory committee, led by NAUI members Tom Brooks

NAUI PSD course, May 2016, Orange County, California, with Course Director Josh Roten This photo was Day 2 of the

course when all divers were doing Full Face Mask skills near Newport Beach.

(NAUI 42340) and Bill Pfeiffer (NAUI 45432), under the

supervision of Training Committee Chair Lonnie Sharp

(NAUI 18314). The initial committee included 12 NAUI

members representing firefighter or police teams around

the world. The members of the PSD advisory committee

included Eric Brooks (NAUI 17438), Tom Brooks (NAUI

42340), Michael Dick (NAUI 52572), Todd Graham (NAUI

15931), Lee Hardee (NAUI 51033), Bill Pfeiffer (NAUI

45432), Kurt Roepcke (NAUI 55008), Josh Roten (NAUI

50395), Matthew Seeman (NAUI 49456), Lonnie Sharp

(NAUI 18431), Mike Sieverman (NAUI 53926), Mark

Smith (NAUI 5515) and Robert Von Loewenfeldt (NAUI

43459). The volunteer effort of each of these members

is commendable and continues the tradition of NAUI

members offering their expertise and service on behalf

of the association. It is through their efforts that NAUI

introduced its first PSD course into a highly specialized

market, and we are all in their debt.

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The initial goal of the PSD advisory committee was

to identify the best of what was being taught in public

safety diving and incorporate it into a NAUI program to

serve as a baseline for NAUI PSD training. The resulting

course objectives identify “the knowledge, skills and

abilities needed by Public Safety Divers to perform basic

underwater search, rescue and recovery in conditions

similar to that in which they were trained; and as with

all NAUI training, NAUI PSD Instructors can exceed

minimum course standards to include additional

requirements to meet local needs.”

The NAUI Public Safety Diver course standards first

appeared in the 2016 edition of the NAUI Standards and

Policies Manual. The first official NAUI PSD course was

taught by Course Director Sgt. Neail Holland (NAUI

48764) from the Oxnard Police Department in Ventura

County, California, in the first quarter of 2016. The second

course was run by Course Director Josh Roten in May of

2016 with Ken Kramer’s (NAUI 17163) team in Corona

Del Mar, California. The NAUI PSD course is being taught

in nearly every market in which NAUI is engaged. From

the coasts and heartland of the U.S. to partners from

around the globe, the NAUI PSD program grows in scope

each year.

The NAUI PSD course maintains the rigorous standards

that are the hallmark of NAUI training. NAUI PSD

standards provide the most up-to-date and comprehensive

set of entry-level PSD standards in the market, allowing

PSD teams the flexibility to include additional content to

meet local needs. Anyone seeking additional information

or with questions concerning NAUI Public Safety Diver

training is encouraged to contact the NAUI Training

Department (training@naui.org or 1-813-628-6284).

The second course was run by Course Director Josh Roten in May of 2016 with Ken Kramer’s team in Corona Del Mar,

California.