Gallery: Canadian Navy divers train allies in Jamaica

Photos: Royal Canadian Navy

The Royal Canadian Navy has shared a couple of underwater photos from the Tradewinds 2016 exercise during which Canadian Navy diving units instructed Caribbean trainees off Discovery Bay, Jamaica.

More than ten clearance divers from the Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic) and Fleet Diving Unit (Pacific) delivered the Ship’s Team Diver Course at the start of the diving component of the exercise.

The trainees then applied their new skills by conducting diving in support of fleet operations.

“The training events that we’ve done have been ship’s diver-related scenarios, which include hull searches, jetty sweeps, bottom searches and minor salvage projects,” said Lieutenant (Navy) J.R. Gallant, Executive Officer of Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic) and officer-in-charge of the Canadian dive contingent at the exercise.

According to Lance Corporal Ameal Douglas, a diver from the Jamaican Defence Force, the exercise has been “a wonderful experience.”

“We’ve learned a lot from our Canadian counterparts as well as with our partner nations here in the Caribbean,” he said. “I do hope that next year we could do this again and even more.”

Exercise Tradewinds is a multinational maritime interdiction, ground security and interagency exercise led by the U.S. Southern Command.

Participating nations in this year’s exercise included Canada, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.