Long Beach Dive Teams Get Coverage

By Tracy Manzer, Staff Writer LB Press Telegram LONG BEACH - They dive deep where few would dare to dip a toe, looking for hazards ranging from bombs to drugs and bodies to shipwreck debris.

Visibility is limited, often to less than a foot in local waters teeming with sewage runoff and large debris - we're talking washing machines, telephone poles and occasionally vehicles - especially after major storms.
Searches are exacting and often dangerous and require a great deal of manpower. Divers, equipped with special tanks, can spend as long as 90minutes below water searching an area by feel, moving inch by inch."
"If we can see two feet in front of us it's a good day," said Capt. Alan Miki at the Long Beach Fire Department's Lifeguard Beach Operations Division. "But any day you get into the water is a good day," Miki added.

The Port of Long Beach has three local dive teams, as well as access to county and federal teams if needed, at its disposal. They divide their underwater duties into three categories - security, law enforcement and rescue operations.
Under- and above-water security is covered by the Port of Long Beach Dive Team, a subset of the Port's Harbor Patrol.  Nine team members conduct underwater inspections of facilities throughout the port, ensuring the safety of every boat and commercial ship that passes through the port's waterways.  The port divers do so with the help of underwater cameras and robots and though their jurisdiction is technically confined to the port area, the team is able to deploy just about anywhere in the region aboard their 50-foot dive boat, the Sea Guardian.

Handling law enforcement is the Long Beach Police Department's Port Security Dive Team.
The crew of more than a dozen divers - most of them former Navy and U.S. Coast Guard veterans - also trawl beneath the murky waters looking for hazards and contraband, including the recovery of criminal evidence discarded in local waterways and the bodies of victims dumped or lost.

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Police divers regularly search ship hulls, piers and the ocean floor and enforce boating laws within the port and along the city's coast as well as in local marinas, the Los Angeles River and various flood control channels.

But it all began more than 50 years ago with the Long Beach Fire Department/Lifeguard Dive Team.
That team, which consists of 14 Lifeguard Marine Safety Officers and two firefighters, divided among three platoons, started in the 1950s when scuba began to catch on in the area.

Though they weren't officially recognized as a dive team until 1968, they are credited by many California agencies with being a leader in the industry, helping to train the many teams that followed.
In the event of a plane crash, a drowning or a car in the water, the Lifeguard dive team is first on scene and handles the first hour of any rescue operation.

After that, most rescue operations shift to a recovery phase and are turned over to the Long Beach Police Department, or similar agency with the Fire Department/Lifeguard dive team staying on scene to provide safety backup if needed.

This team usually arrives by truck, not boat, but the vehicle is loaded with high-tech gear, dry suits and full face masks to protect the divers.

It can carry four divers and a supervisor anywhere in the city at a moment's notice. It is also equipped to take local crews to help out in other jurisdictions for up to three days.

"We work with each other very well all the time," Miki said of the three local teams. "But there's a reason we're all independent teams, because we all do very different jobs."