Public Safety Diving vs Commercial Diving: Different Trades

By Gus Marchetti, Salvage master. Reviewed by Amanda McCallister, editor.

Marine Salvage & Recovery | Hull & Bottom Cleaning Last spring, I watched a public safety diver spend an hour trying to drag a 40-foot sportfisher off a jetty rock with a single 2-inch cargo strap. He was a skilled swimmer, but that job needed a crane barge and a couple of 5-ton chain hoists. The look on his face said he knew it too. Different trades, different tools, but out there on the water the line blurs until somebody gets hurt. When people ask me what I do, I tell them marine salvage. That means I get called when a boat sinks, a bridge pile needs repair, or a dredge clogs a channel. Public safety divers get called for different things: evidence recovery, drowning victims, and stolen vehicles. We both wear wetsuits and dive helmets, but the similarities end at the waterline.

Two Jobs, One Water Column

The easiest way to see it is to look at who signs the work order. A public safety team answers a call. A commercial outfit answers a contract. When that call goes out for a drowned hiker or a stolen SUV, the clock starts on evidence preservation and family closure. When I send a diver over the side on a salvage job, the clock is ticking on demurrage and the client's insurance adjuster. Both divers get wet, but the mission risk is night and day. Commercial diving is a gainful occupation. I've got a crew of 12, and they're all trained to ADCI standards, work within HAZWOPER guidelines, and operate under a comprehensive safety manual. We do underwater welding, concrete rehabilitation, pipeline inspection, and marine salvage. Public safety divers are usually cops or firefighters first. Diving is a collateral duty. The swimmer I watched that day had taken an 80-hour course out of his own pocket, bought his own drysuit, and the city didn't give him a dime for expense.

Training Costs Are a Huge Divider

You can get into public-safety diving for roughly $2,000 to $4,000 in classes like those from Dive Rescue International or ERDI. You'll need a sturdy drysuit, a full-face mask, or maybe a lightweight helmet. A typical police department might pony up for the suits and cylinders, but I've seen officers push bake-sale fundraisers to afford good thermal protection. Compare that to commercial dive school. At Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle or Santa Barbara City College, you're looking at $20,000 to $30,000 for a six-month program that includes surface-supplied gear, welding, cutting, and rigging. Those schools churn out divers for companies like Global Diving & Salvage, Orion Marine Group, and every harbor dredger up and down the Gulf. On the other end, an experienced commercial diver with a few hundred hours underwater can pull $25 to $35 an hour, and a saturation diver on a deep-water job can clear six figures in a year. Public safety divers are paid their municipal salary, which is respectable but doesn't climb with dive time.

The Gear Makes the Man (and the Bank Balance)

A public safety diver in a typical mid-tier department probably wears a DUI drysuit, maybe a Zeagle regulator, and a dive light. They run SCUBA with a backup cylinder, and they're tethered with a single line for communication. In the cold, murky water I work in, I send my people down in a Kirby Morgan 37 helmet, with a hot-water suit if the water temperature is below 50 degrees. That helmet alone costs about $8,000 new, not counting the umbilical, the pneumofathometer, and a full redundancy package. Commercial diving gear is built to be abused. The rubber is thicker, the seals are reinforced, and the helmet is a chunk of fiberglass and brass that weighs 30 pounds. That weight is your friend in a current. The public safety guy wants to be light and nimble for a body recovery in a pump house. Different job, different rig. I won't say one is better, but I know which one I'd want if I had to cut a steel cable attached to a ship's prop.

Who's Watching the Bottom When It Gets Heavy?

The biggest difference is the standards, or the lack of them on one side. Commercial diving in the US has OSHA 1910.430 and the American National Standards Institute's consensus standards we call ADCI. My operation is audited, our procedures are written, and every diver has a certificate in the office. Public safety diving has a patchwork: NFPA 1006 does cover some technical rescue, and there are voluntary accreditation programs like the American Academy of Underwater Sciences for science divers, but the cops and firefighters who do this work often operate under their department's SOPs, which can be thin. Most public safety teams I've met are disciplined and train hard. But the legal reality is that a municipal department might have no federal requirement to maintain a dive manual, track gas exposure, or do the kind of logbook review we do. That's why I think the two fields need each other. When a public safety team reaches the edge of their capability, they call in a commercial company like mine. It's not a matter of pride; it's a matter of knowing the difference.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a public safety diver transition to commercial diving? Sure, but you'll need to unlearn a few habits. Commercial diving is about welding, cutting, and working with heavy gear from a surface station. The training is about 6 months and costs $20-30,000. You'll also need to pass a commercial diving physical and prove you can handle the cold, dark, and heavy. Which is more dangerous, public safety or commercial diving? That's a tradeoff. Commercial divers have more support but face long-term hazards like contamination and depth exposure. Public safety divers are at higher risk from poor training budgets and doing recovery work in zero visibility. Do public safety divers use rebreathers? Some elite teams use them, but they are not the norm. Most public safety divers stick with open-circuit SCUBA and are tethered when possible. Rebreathers add a lot of training and maintenance, which doesn't fit the volunteer or collateral-duty model. Can a public safety diver make money doing freelance underwater work? No. In the US, performing commercial diving services requires commercial certification and an employer with ADCI accreditation, plus insurance. A police diver moonlighting as a hull cleaner is illegal under OSHA rules.