FLEET DIVING GROUP (Canary Islands Diving Unit)

The Canary Islands Navy Diving Unit is entrusted with the following missions:

• Conducting harbor and waterway clearance operations. Protection of warships and harbor facilities against possible underwater threats in and around the different Canary Islands.
• Surveillance and protection of national and foreign merchant vessels when so ordered by the Canary Islands Naval Command Authorities.
• Locating, reconnoitering, retrieving and disposing underwater explosive devices in harbors, beaches and coasts.
• Cooperate with Mine Countermeasures (MCM) Units in special operations missions.
• Inspecting and repairing ships.

Other missions include search and rescue tasks, retrieving wreckage and underwater material, ship husbandry and protection of our underwater heritage.

This Unit is made up of 29 highly qualified people including diving technicians, combat divers, MCM divers, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) experts, Search and Rescue (SAR) divers and a specialized paramedic on diving accidents.

When the Unit is not engaged in a given operation, its members carry out routine physical exercises and training and maintenance drills to be always in perfect readiness:

• Sports activities are arranged to warrant an adequate physical shape of the divers. Fitness is of paramount importance to efficiently conduct the demanding underwater operations.
• Training involves EOD exercises and diving drills on search and refloating techniques, use of underwater cameras, coordination of diving squads, underwater repairs, etc.
• Maintenance of all Unit components: diving equipment, craft, engines, hyperbaric chambers, compressors, special tools, etc.

Always at immediate readiness is an EOD team which can deploy within 24 hours.

Recent operations include:

• Refloating an Air Force F-18 sunk in Gando Bay.
• Refloating the patrol boat ‘Tagomago’.
• Rescue of a hydrographic craft from the ‘Malaspina’ near the isle of Fuerteventura.
• Different EOD operations like the disposal of a 240 mm shell, a 140 mm shell, an 81 mm mortar and a tethered mine.
• Sinking of the barge ‘Cendy’, south of Gran Canaria, with explosives.

Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel from this Unit have participated in deployments in the Lebanon and Bosnia.