The SCUBA Diver insignia is issued for both officers and enlisted Coast Guard personnel, but the qualification requirement is the same: completion of the six-week SCUBA Diver Course held at the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center (NDSTC) in Panama City. Because of the costs associated with SCUBA training and a high dropout rate due to the physically demanding nature of the training, candidates for the course are restricted to active-duty volunteers who have been assigned or are seeking assignment to a diving unit.
Before the attacks of September 11, 2001, this would have been a fairly significant roadblock for Coast Guard personnel interested in a career as a Diver. Although the Coast Guard had been performing dive operations since 1940, its Dive Program encompassed just six units at the start of the millennium. But the realization that our nation’s ports were vulnerable in terms of underwater security led to the rapid expansion of the number of dive-capable units, tripling within a period of just two years.
Even so, all Coast Guard divers were still collateral-duty volunteers who, while qualified as divers, had careers in other ratings. The shortcomings of such a system were revealed in August, 2006, when two Coast Guard divers died during an impromptu training dive in the Arctic Ocean—twice as many as had died in the previous sixty-plus years of Coast Guard diving operations.
The subsequent Congressional investigation and the Coast Guard’s own internal review of its dive program led first to the introduction of special duty pay for divers and then, in 2014, the establishment of a Diving (DV) rating. When the rating officially debuted in January of that year, the Coast Guard had allotted it 64 enlisted and 7 Warrant Officer billets.
To be eligible for entry in the DV rating, Coast Guard personnel must complete Second Class Diver Training at the NDSTC, which includes Scuba qualification.