Exercise Northern Blue Juice was an Armed Services Sub-Aqua Diving Expedition to Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain; planned by The Royal Dragoon Guards and consisted of 16 qualified divers of varying qualifications. The expedition aimed to build and expand each soldier’s own personal diving skills, increase their diving qualifications and for each diver to partake in a local Marine Conservation Project alongside Deep Blue Dive Centre. Diver’s came from across 4 Mech Bde as well as two Reservists from the Artist Rifles and The Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry.
Planning started whilst the divers were on Operation Herrick 17 with the Expedition Leader, Major Steven Kirkman, outlining the aims and fund raising required. Of the 16 divers, 9 needed to qualify to the basic level, so were sent on courses to the various service diving centres in Plymouth, Bovington and Kiel in Germany.
As the start date neared the immediate challenge was the various administration checks to ensure the divers were ready. This included diving medicals, passports, dive qualifications, insurance to name just a few. The process was rather onerous and exacerbated due to the majority of the divers still being on Post Operational leave. The divers finally met up at Birmingham Airport on the 29th of June 2013 and arrived in Fuerteventura several hours late after a considerable flight delay. The Diving commenced the following day with the first dive being simply to test and adjust equipment as well as provide the two Instructors and Joint Service Sub-Aqua Diving Supervisors (Major Steve Kirkman and Major Martyn Redfearn) with the opportunity to view each diver and make an assessment of their diving skills, thus aiding future course and dive planning. Each dive day consisted of 2 or 3 dives with the first priority being to teach and certify the 9 recently qualified divers up to the next diving level of British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC) – Sport Diver. The qualification would enable the divers to dive to a maximum depth of 35 metres and also participate in planned decompression dives; in which divers must ascend to the surface, stopping at points on the ascent in order to release the excess gases; failure to do this correctly and the chances of the diver suffering decompression sickness would be greatly increased.
As the days continued we began to include our contribution towards the reef conservation project alongside our chosen dive operator Deep Blue Dive Centre. The divers were set small yet significant tasks of recording the detail about the various marine species and coral growth living amongst the various reefs we were diving. The information would be used later to help determine the healthy state of the reef and any action which might be required to bring about change in local fishing and diving activities in the area. This was a really rewarding aspect of the expedition; as it provided each diver with an excellent insight into the fragile nature of our Oceans.
Having qualified 9 of the divers to BSAC Sports Diver, the next stage was to train 4 divers towards gaining their BSAC Dive Leader qualification, an important step for those divers wishing to become instructors in the near future. Sergeant Gibson of the Adjutant General Corp also managed to complete a large portion of the BSAC Advanced Diver which is the 2nd highest diving qualification in the BSAC.
With a total of 296 dives completed and a total of 8895 minutes of underwater activity and training, as well as 9 personnel taught and certified to BSAC Sports Diver, 2 divers completing the full Dive Leader qualification and 1 diver completing most of the BSAC Advanced Diver qualification, the expedition was a huge success with each and every diver having achieved a huge amount both in personal diving skills but also improvements to their personal leadership and management skills which they will undoubtedly use in their normal daily routine.
Expeditions such as this are becoming increasingly more difficult to get of the ground and, without the very generous contributions from our sponsors such as the Ulysses Trust, many of the younger and less paid soldiers would not be able to afford to participate. It is with this in mind that all members of Exercise Northern Blue Juice would like to pass on our gratitude to the Ulysses Trust and their Board of Trustees for their very generous support.
S Kirkman, Major, Expedition Leader
