By Ron Laytner Copyright 2008 Edit International In the busy harbor of the Port of Miami a diver is 40 feet down and crawling on the seabed, about to disappear under 144 million pounds of cruise ship into a two to three foot high crawl space beneath its long keel and the harbor bottom. If the ship should rock, even gently at anchor, the man could be crushed. He’s using scuba gear in blinding currents of swirling sand and dangerous bottom debris. And he must avoid powerful hot and cold intakes and exhausts that can trap or drown him. Above him are 12 decks of ship holding 4,000 passengers and crew – a perfect terrorist target. A successful attack at a busy center like this could destroy sea-going tourism for years, shut down hotels and devastate the area’s economy. The underwater man is searching for a bomb. He’s a police diver engaged in one of the most important, dangerous and until now secretive jobs of our time. The Port of Miami is a gateway to America. Into its harbor every year comes $12 billion dollars of business on cruise ships, oil tankers and cargo ships connecting 240 countries, moving almost four million passengers and carrying over one million cargo containers. Every day passengers from all over the world pass through. On board they dance, eat, gamble and swim, oblivious to the many measures being taken to keep them safe. 1
DEVICES AND DISORIENTATION While ninety-seven-thousand people have port related jobs in Miami, only five police divers and a unit leader regularly check the hulls of the more than 800 cruise and 2000 cargo ships entering and leaving each year. They train with veteran military divers who provide classified briefings on explosive weapons and attach training dummies to hulls. Underwater, arrayed in a long harness of lines, the searchers work as a team looking for explosives or drugs attached to ship hulls. In their conversations they never use the panic-causing word ‘bomb’: “Device” is preferable. Police diver Luis Sierra, 34, is the father of two girls and is awaiting the birth of a son. “Devices’ are not the only danger, “I often fight disorientation. Which way is up? I have to turn on the small light above my mask and look for my exhale bubbles floating upwards. To find down I sometimes just push my hands into the cold muck at the bottom of the harbor.” They are trained for conditions of near zero visibility. “One day a ship came in from Jamaica with a welded metal box attached to a stabilizer far down on her hull. We wanted to wait to see if anyone would come to retrieve it but were ordered by federal authorities to bring it up so it could be opened immediately. The box contained 120 pounds of compressed marijuana.”
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And the dangers of the job don’t end on dry land. Three divers working for Jamaican police were kidnapped and murdered by Kingston drug lords in 2001. As a warning to others, one was fed alive and screaming through a tree chipper. “We could have watched for exhaust bubbles if traffickers came for the drugs but they could have come in unnoticed wearing expensive rebreather tanks that make their own oxygen and leave no trail of carbon dioxide bubbles.” Sierra and the team remain unfazed, “We are police officers first and then divers. We’ll be over to Jamaica in a heart-beat if they call on us for help.” But despite being expert police marksmen, the divers are not armed while submerged. “We are not in an action movie,” says Sierra, “You don’t want to be underwater in a life and death struggle.” Until recently the team has been a guarded secret. “Our work was always unknown to the public, but now it is official policy to let terrorists know we are on the job,” says Sierra. While the FBI has been checking non-American students at flying schools, other have been working with dive shops, quietly investigating people taking diving lessons or placing orders for specialized gear such as rebreather.
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Recently all ports in the United States were warned by the FBI about the possible threat of underwater terrorists. The information apparently emerged from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. Agents are now seeking the names of anyone in America trained in ‘re-breather’ dive tanks. Sierra explains, “If, say, traffickers came to retrieve drugs attached to a ship’s hull we would watch for exhaust bubbles if they were using scuba tanks. But they could come unnoticed, wearing expensive rebreathers that leave no trail of carbon dioxide bubbles. Terrorists usually have unlimited expense accounts. They could afford the best re-breather units.” Security is now a top maritime priority. Most ships drop down their own lifeboat tender, manned 24 hours a day around the ship watching for any dangers, in addition to police and coastguard protection.
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THE PROVISION OF SAFE PARKING “We haven’t had the pleasure of checking the Queen Mary2 which comes into Port Everglades at nearby Fort Lauderdale,” says Sierra. The giant ship has an array of small floating docks all around it to prevent any sort of suicide water attack. It has its own large security force and likely its own divers. “Warships also have their own divers,” explains Sierra. “The US Navy has electronic surveillance systems and human watchers looking after their ships. But we do searches of the seawalls where they will dock. It’s our job to provide them with a safe parking lot. The Navy has hi tech underwater communications systems for its divers. But we use line of sight calling with facemasks that broadcast to one another. Checking ships is complex. Police divers must coordinate their dives with ship traffic, tides and time. Only crew members who need to know are warned divers are coming. A boarding team introduces itself to the Captain and engineer then goes through a US coastguard approved ‘tag off’ procedure. Red tags are placed and initialed over every control that could turn on or off machinery that could harm the divers. “If someone turns on the steering gear while we’re checking it, we could be crushed,” says diver Sierra. “A thruster could wash us out or suck us in. A diver could be sucked up against a grill and die just like victims in large swimming pools.
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“We must be careful using RF or radio frequency broadcasting when doing explosive searches. I’d rather have no light, because of photo sensitive detonators on some devices we have learned about. I don’t want to be the one who triggers anything,” says Sierra. “If we do find a ‘parasitic device’ on a ship we can either video tape it with a portable underwater camera or provide a live feed to expert analysts on shore showing what we see. If we did find a device, we would analyze and confirm it as such. The ship would immediately be evacuated and US Navy and FBI ordinance divers called in to disarm and dismantle it.” Luis Sierra is currently taking his Masters degree in Criminal Justice. He tells me his hobby “used to be diving – but I lost it when I came to this unit. Now my hobby is being the best husband and father that I can be. - The End – By Ron Laytner Copyright 2008 Edit International
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A chain of Miami Dade police divers heading down to check the hull of a ship. Photo Edit International
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B U P T N E F C E G R N I V ‘DI R CR E D UN
S N O I T A C I BL OMBS ’ B S FOR E SHIP S I U R
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