ADP-SS-August 15-18 2003

The training site for the Florida State University Academic Diving Programs 40 hour certificate course in Surface Supplied diving is the FSU Marine Laboratory facility at Turkey Point.

The Marine Lab is located an hour South of the main campus on the Gulf of Mexico and offers an ideal location for the course. The Marine Lab provides support for this and other training courses, scientific research activities, and student outreach activities. The site and adjacent waterways are very isolated and offer a pristine research environment that for the time being remains free from the pollution and destruction that large-scale development can bring. The Marine Lab provides lodging facilities, classroom facilities, and a variety of vessels for the training.

John Hitron Ph.D. the Marine facility director welcomes the classes with an in briefing covering the wide variety of research activities both conducted by and hosted by the Lab. One of the favorite sections of the in-brief to both staff and students of the course covers the some of the local inhabitants and visitors to the facilities which include bull, black tip, and bonnet head sharks, alligators, black bears, two resident bald eagles, tarpon, wild boar and at times of the year manatee’s. This initial briefing is invariably met with some skepticism but after a quick tour of the facility the class was able to observe one of the resident alligators swimming freely out the channel which seemed to give the rest of the briefing much more validity as far as the students were concerned.

The Academic Diving Program was formed in 1975 to support scientific research diving under the auspices of Florida State University. The program has grown appreciably in the last few years with expansions in the areas of recreational SCUBA instruction, scientific and research diving, and commercial diving techniques and equipment. At the forefront of the program Dan Marelli Ph.D. an invertebrate biologist with an extensive scientific diving background continues to both conduct ongoing research projects and to instruct both the academic SCUBA program and a specialty course training scientists in underwater biology and research techniques.

The university training program has expanded it’s customer base as well to include state and federal agencies, American Academy of Underwater Sciences member institutions, private industry clients, and others while maintaining its commitment to the students and staff of Florida State University.

Many of the tasks performed by scientific divers are conducted using SCUBA diving equipment, some of these tasks could be more safely and efficiently be performed with the incorporation of communications equipment, surface supplied diving technology, and adoption of some established commercial diving techniques. To that end the staff of the FSU-ADP developed and implemented the surface supplied diving 40-hour certificate course.

For over a year now the course has been refined to provide the most safe and applicable training to the end users. This ongoing development process is driven by the input and sense of ownership all candidates take away from the training.

One of the factors making the Marine Facility so desirable for this training course is the isolation and lack of distractions. This allows the students and staff to completely focus on the training objectives at hand.

To decrease candidate’s time away form ongoing research the course is compressed into an intensive four-day period over a long weekend. The training runs a minimum of 40 hours but often runs longer, candidate comfort with the equipment and techniques driving the schedule to a far greater extent than the clock.

The training session is designed with academic instruction consuming the first half of the day and practical experience dives occupying the afternoon and evening hours. The students begin with familiarization dives focusing on the emergency procedures for the equipment. When the students are competent with these skills some projects are added to the training dives and the transition in focus for the students changes from one of total focus on the equipment itself to one of comfort and reliance on the equipment. This comfort level continues to improve over the following days as the students rotate through all stations of the dive side while also performing the pre-dive and post-dive inspection and cleaning of the equipment.

The first day of the course involves learning the characteristics of the equipment used, the emergency procedures for the equipment, and the manufacturers recommended maintenance and inspection procedures for the equipment. Students receive certification as Kirby Morgan Diving Systems International equipment inspectors. After completion of training this qualifies them to perform the pre and post dive inspection on the KMDSI line of products. While performing equipment cleaning and preparations for the next days training the students had the opportunity to observe another of the Marine Labs frequent visitors when a five foot bull shark surfaced and swam lazily by the boat with it’s dorsal fin cutting an ominous profile above the water.

The second day of training begins with lectures covering diving history, the adoption and implementation of OSHA commercial diving regulations, Coast Guard regulations, Association of Diving Contractors consensus standards, and communications methods to include the Navy line pull signals. The focus on regulatory issues applicable to all employee divers is the second objective of this training course. The applicability of these regulations continues to be a widely misinterpreted or ignored subject amongst various employee’s and employers engaged in operations involving hyperbaric exposure as a function of employment. Another area needing clarification to the industry as a whole is the intent and implementation of exemptions to the commercial standard and when they are applicable. The students are given homework assignments requiring a fair amount of research into the regulations. Knowledge of the regulations themselves and the ability to support a given opinion or statement with the official reference is the purpose of the training.

The afternoon session of day two involves performance of selected projects the students are allowed to perform in water of fair visibility projects they will later perform in zero visibility. An item of note for this days training was the observance by the group of a manatee while leaving the Marine Lab turning basin and heading for open water.

The third day of training begins with lectures covering physics and charting requirements specific to surface supplied diving operations. The next phase is medicine offering a reinforcement of some basic physiology and diving medicine, much of the focus of this phase of training is centered on what is actually occurring in the divers body and not rote memorization of established protocols and symptoms.

The afternoon of the third day the students put the practical skills from the previous day to work in a more alien environment. The turning basin of the Marine Lab is at the mouth of an extensive network of marshlands resulting in a superb training environment with tannic stained water and a soft silt bottom. Upon setting down the visibility is eclipsed to true zero visibility, black out conditions. The students are able to enforce the techniques learned in the communications class with a tender directed searching drill and then move on to performance of the projects practiced the previous day.

The final day of training begins with the KMDSI equipment inspector exam as well as the course final exam. This is followed by a review and discussion session and then the students prepare for the final dives of the training. The students will have another session of re-enforcement conducting more diving product before securing operations for a course critique session and issuance of course completion certificates.

The students come from a wide variety of backgrounds including public safety diving, scientific diving, aquarists, underwater film production, engineering and inspection divers, and some who are just interested in improving and expanding their overall diving knowledge base.

The training course is preferably offered at the Marine Laboratory facility but can be offered off site for larger groups. For more information on this or other training visit the FSU-ADP website at www.adp.fsu.edu