HAWAII -- Imagine being 40 feet below the water’s surface working with something as cumbersome as a hammer and pliers. Now, imagine you have zero visibility.

As a diver, sometimes hearing is a more necessary sense than sight. Prodding the sand with a steel rod, Petty Officer 2nd Class Nicholi Zapara relies on the clinking sound of metal to find a chain buried beneath the murky water of Port Allen Harbor on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.

Coast Guard divers operate from one of three regional dive lockers in either Portsmouth, VA, San Diego or Honolulu and are capable of performing a variety of missions from hull inspections to port assessments and storm recovery operations. Although divers operate as a small unit, they routinely work in conjunction with other assets to get the job done, making them highly versatile and equally proficient.

Zapara, and the other divers of Regional Dive Locker Pacific, work alongside buoy tenders to support salvage and recovery operations of floating aids to navigation throughout the 12.2 million square miles of the Coast Guard 14th District.

“Regional Dive Locker Pacific is a valuable resource to have in the Pacific,” said Lt. Furyisa Miller, D14 waterways management deputy branch chief. “By utilizing divers to conduct aids to navigation work, the District 14 buoy tenders are able to focus their resource hours on various multi-missions such as law enforcement, marine environmental protection or response.”

Divers increase AToN mission efficiency because they are able to quickly respond to discrepancies and conduct assessments, significantly reducing the transit time that it would take a 225-foot seagoing buoy tender to arrive on-scene, continued Miller. The logistical planning for divers may involve commercial or military flights and combined coordination with local resources but this solution saves time, is cost-effective and conserves resource hours.

“Having been stationed on a buoy tender before, I know what it’s like,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Jesse Robb, a diver with RDLP. “It can be exhausting work so it’s nice to be able to relieve some of that work load from the ship’s crew.”

A six-member dive crew from RDLP recently flew to Kauai to assist Cutter Walnut’s crew with floating aids in Port Allen Harbor. With one buoy lying on the ocean floor, divers were needed to bring it to the surface where the buoy tender’s crew could begin the grueling work of salvaging it. In two hours and 10 minutes of dive time, the divers not only refloated the sunken buoy and chain but also established a new buoy. For the Coast Guard to contract a salvage company to perform these tasks, the operation would have cost $20,000.
Coast Guard units work collaboratively maintaining the 393 floating navigation aids located throughout the Coast Guard 14th District. The symbiotic relationship between Walnut’s crew and the divers of RDLP ensures mariners can consistently rely on the Coast Guard and the aids they maintain.

Aids to navigation work is vital to the Global Supply Chain and ensures vessel traffic moves smoothly in and out of the 360 commercial ports in the United States.

But in the island state of Hawaii or the territories of Guam, Saipan and American Samoa this same work is critical as 80 to 90 percent of all goods sold on the islands arrive via the maritime transportation system. By extension, these aids prevent maritime incidents such as groundings, collisions and allisions preserving the safety of life at sea and the critical marine habitat here.

“There are many benefits for using divers to work on floating navigation aids,” said Chief Warrant Officer Chandler Tyre, command dive officer of RDLP. “One benefit to the cutter is that it eliminates the risk of navigating within yards of shoal water.”

Historically, floating navigation aids are located in shoal water with shallow depths, creating the potential risk for running aground.

Divers can also visually inspect the potential impact the buoy chain and sinkers have on the sensitive marine habitat, according to Tyre. Divers can position buoys in locations with minimal effect to the coral reefs surrounding the Hawaiian Islands, Guam and Saipan.“I love what we do,” said Zapara. “Who else gets to travel the world and dive it? Plus, I take great pride knowing that we did a job that will help someone find their way safely back home.”

Regional Dive Locker Pacific, based out of Honolulu, consists of nine active-duty Coast Guard divers who operate in support of D14 AToN, as well as storm recovery operations and subsurface inspections of water-front facilities and high-valued assets.