PERT Low Visibility & Black Water Search Diver
While calm conditions and good visibility are pretty much the norm for recreational diving, professional emergency response diving often suffers just the opposite. Professional rescue divers have to excel at their jobs at night, in swift currents, churned up seas and even completely black water with zero visibility.
For those interested in joining a rescue dive team, the new PERT Limited Visibility & Black Water Search course is the key step toward reaching that goal. The three days course is designed to train divers in the benefits and proper procedures for safe night, low visibility and zero visibility diving. The student is trained to understand what is the proper equipment and how to use it, how to safely plan and dive in such challenging conditions.
Pre-requisites
- 18 years old.
- Submission of a completed medical exam no older than 12 months.
- PADI Rescue Diver or equivalent
- Current Emergency First Response certification (or equivalent first aid and CPR certification.)
- Current certification or training in oxygen administration for diving accidents.
Objectives
- To re-evaluate the diver’s basic water skills and assess his ability to progress beyond this level to a Level One operations certification course.
- To test the diver’s ability to function in a low- or zero-visibility environment while successfully conducting basic diving operations.
- To assess the diver’s ability to make assessments of underwater scene hazards in a zero visibility environment.
- To assess the diver’s ability to respond and provide adequate self-rescue when encountering common underwater hazards.
- To assess the diver’s ability to respond and effectively assist another diver who has encountered difficulties while diving in a zero visibility environment.
Required Equipment
- Standard PERT diver equipment.
- Appropriate dive lights:
- Primary underwater dive light
- Backup underwater dive light
- One chemical or battery-operated light per dive
- Appropriate surface communication device (whistle, strobe, etc)
Course Syllabus
Part 1: Low Visibility & Night Diving
- Demonstrate understanding of the techniques to safely dive in low visibility situation or during the night:
- Assemble and position lighting systems used for navigation or orientation (surface and underwater lighting systems).
- Perform free descent using the line or sloping bottom as a visual guide only.
- Use a compass for underwater navigation.
- Demonstrate anti-silting techniques.
- Note and identify nocturnal hazards.
- Perform a lights-out exercise for three minutes while remaining in a stationary position on the bottom.
Part 2: Black Water Diving & Search
A: Confined Water Training
- 720 meter swim in less than 20 minutes in full dive gear
- 400 meter swim without equipment
- 15 minute water tread with the last 60 seconds with the hands kept above the water
- 25 meter breath hold swim underwater on one breath of air with fins
- Switching to a redundant air source and completing a controlled ascent In a simulated out of air situation, share gas with a dive buddy and complete a controlled ascent
- Follow a simple line navigation course that passes through minor entanglement or entrapment hazards without signs of panic or other difficulties.
B. Open Water Training
- Three dive sessions in which the student will be exposed to the following conditions wearing a blacked-out mask (to simulate zero-visibility conditions.)
- Simulated or staged underwater entanglement situations
- Simulated or staged underwater entrapment situations
- Entrapment or entanglement situations with limited gas supply
- Entanglement or entrapment situations with simulated out of air emergencies
- Complete at least three responses to a team member who has encountered a hazard underwater and requires assistance. Each diver will respond to at least one entanglement situation, one entrapment situation, and at least one out of air emergency complicated by an entanglement or entrapment.
- Demonstrate responses with verbal and non-verbal communications.
- A 20-minute black water dive during which divers are complete simple tasks such as line guided obstacle courses, simple search patterns and similar tasks.
