It’s a calm, cool spring Indiana night on a 3,200-acre lake during the 35th annual midnight fishing tournament when a report comes in that a contestant has fallen out of his boat halfway across the lake and has not resurfaced. The lake manager calls 911 and the dive team responds. It’s 2:00 a.m.
As the units get to the last known location in rescue mode, they deploy the tethered primary diver and start the boat-based dive. Ten minutes into the dive and working in zero visibility at 65 feet, the primary diver calls to the tender: “I am entangled, I cannot see, and I’m unable to move.” The tethered backup diver is immediately deployed to assist. Suddenly, the backup diver calls to the tender with a panicked voice: “My line is snagged and I cannot move!” Two divers are now rendered helpless and time is ticking on the air left in the 80-cubic-foot cylinders they are using.
They are both entangled in manmade fish habitats. What’s your public safety diving (PSD) team’s next move in this situation?
Fish Habitats
Fish habitats come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials that provide fish cover. In a sport fisherman’s eyes, these are gold mines for harvesting big trophy fish. However, to a public safety diver, they cause major safety problems, compromise search pattern integrity, cause serious entanglement issues in low to zero visibility, and could lead to the worst possible outcome-adding another death statistic to public safety diving.
Fish habitats have been made during events and campaigns where hundreds of manmade trees are constructed in a multitude of shapes, sizes, and materials and placed into local lakes, ponds, and rivers. The materials range from two- à— eight-inch PVC pipe placed in a concrete base to smaller 5â„8-inch à— four-foot rebar placed in a small concrete base with a chain and anchor attached. Others are simply made out of old pallets and scrap materials.
These habitats are all across the United States and in a multitude of areas within bodies of water at different depths; they have even been in public beach areas. The only method for knowing how to mitigate the threats these habitats pose is to be proactive during nondiscretionary time. Preplanning with local waterway owners and local fishing clubs as well as using sonar on these areas will best serve PSD teams to ensure divers do not become another statistic.
All PSD teams should make divers aware of this type of entanglement hazard and work toward structured and safe training in a pool or controlled setting with a similar style manmade prop and come up with solutions to overcome this hazard.
Entanglement Survival (Firefighters wire box)
All too often, we as public safety divers refer to our skill sets as basic SCUBA skills. Let’s not kid ourselves any longer in the fact that there is absolutely nothing basic about PSD SCUBA emergencies and we need to get out of the habit of calling it as such. We are training our divers to have lifesaving SCUBA skills that they can fall back on when in a fight for their lives. You train your divers to overcome the basic emergencies that would cause pure panic to a recreational diver. In the advanced PSD training world, those basic recreational emergencies should merely be an inconvenience.
If you become entangled, maintaining your composure and being slow and methodical are going to be the keys to success. If your heart rate is up, your ability to maintain composure and control of fine motor skills may be the difference between freeing yourself and remaining entangled. In the case of the divers mentioned above, only a cool and calm composure accompanied by strong lifesaving scuba skills will prevail.
It’s always a good idea to ensure your divers are carrying two, if not three, cutting tools stowed on their buoyancy control device, on their leg, or in an easily accessible pocket. You must train on removal and replacement of these tools in a controlled environment. Build your annual procedures to have a cutting station and add a blacked out mask.
The issue with fish habitats is that it is not always a cuttable situation or solution; work with your divers on following their line back to the entanglement point to work out the situation.
Strong lifesaving SCUBA skills along with annual training in a controlled environment such as a shallow pool setting and in a safe progression will build trust and confidence in the diver’s ability to overcome this issue.
Training Steps
The progression of training would look something like this:
First step: Training in the classroom, educating every diver on the size, shape, and possibilities that may be faced with the entanglement. Build several habitat styles and use them for training.
Second step: Training on the pool deck, not dressed or on SCUBA in the entanglement so the diver can see and slowly get verbal direction from the instructor. This paints the picture for the diver when he is blacked out or in minimal visibility.
Third step: Work with the diver in the shallow end of the pool, in the entanglement, fully dressed, and on SCUBA with partial visibility and the instructor close by if needed.
Fourth step: Move to the dive well of the pool fully dressed and on SCUBA and blacked out in the entanglement with the instructor close by.
NEVER expose your diver to any entanglement type training in open water. Keep it in a controlled setting and train on worst-case scenarios for the operational calls.
Conduct annual reviews of all divers on National Fire Protection Association 1670, Standard on Operations and Training for Technical Search and Rescue Incidents, SCUBA skills evaluation, and swim testing.
Have strong standard operating procedures in place for a rapid intervention team operation on the entangled diver and train on it in a controlled setting.
Preplanning
Unfortunately, there are no consistencies in location, size, shape, or materials used for fish habitats, and you can encounter one at any time. If you find yourself entangled in a fish habitat, fall back on your training, stay calm, try to untangle yourself, and then signal or call for your backup diver if you cannot free yourself. Have a plan in place before you encounter these entanglements.
Scott Huff is a 16-year veteran of the fire service and a lieutenant with the Indianapolis (IN) Fire Department assigned to Engine Company 5. He has been with the Indianapolis Fire Department his entire career and was the dive commander from 2009 to 2015. Huff is an active public safety SCUBA diver and is certified through Dive Rescue International as a Public Safety Diver, Public Safety Scuba Instructor, Diver Rescue Specialist Trainer, Ice Dive Trainer, Swift Water Trainer, Dry Suit Trainer, and Interspiro Repair Tech. He dives PADI, NAUI, SSI, ESI, DRI, and HSA (Handicap Scuba Association) as an instructor. Huff is actively involved with the International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists, is a graduate of Halls Dive Academy, and travels the country teaching specialty classes and seminars on public safety diving as a corporate trainer for Dive Rescue International.
To a public safety diver, fish habitats cause major safety problems, compromise search pattern integrity, cause serious entanglement issues in low to zero visibility, and could lead to the worst possible outcome. (Photo courtesy of Bigstock.)
The props can be made from any size and length of PVC, plastic water tubing, rebar, and even old wooden pallets with a heavy/concrete base. When building the training prop, be creative; rules don’t apply here so make sure you’re exposing your divers, in a controlled setting, to the multitude of angles on entanglement. (Photos by author.)
