Guernsey Police

The Underwater Search Unit consists of six police officers who receive training in one of two national police diving schools culminating in a Health and Safety certificate to dive and work underwater. The initial course comprises 8 weeks of continuous training and there are further courses for supervisors.

On every diving operation one of the specially trained supervisors in the team is responsible for a particular dive. Additionally there is the diver, the diver's attendant, the standby diver and their attendant and a surface demand panel and communications operator.

Most of these roles are interchangeable so that any of the team can be the diver or attendant etc. The team only use compressed air to dive with and are restricted to a maximum operating depth of 50 metres, and then only at that depth when certain criteria are satisfied, such as immediate access to a decompression chamber should an accident occur.

The team are able to dive in fresh and salt water and a lot of the diving involved entails searching in waters where the visibility is poor, or on some occasions no visibility at all.

Past diving operations have involved body recovery, searching for missing vessels and weapons used in the commission of crime. The majority of the work the team performs is recovering stolen property from various land based bodies of water.