Clearance Diving Branch (RAN)
The Clearance Diving Branch is the specialist diving unit of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) whose versatile role covers all spheres of military diving, and includes explosive ordnance disposal and maritime counter-terrorism. The Branch has evolved from traditional maritime diving, and explosive ordnance disposal, to include a special operations focus.
Clearance Diving Branch Badge
Inspecting clandestine naval mines in the Persian Gulf, 2003.
Clearance Diver preparing to conduct a maritime tactical operations dive using Divex Shadow Excursion rebreather during Exercise RIMPAC 2016 in Southern California
Clearance Divers prepare to enter the water during a Very Shallow Water (VSW) scenario during Exercise Tricrab 2016 in Guam
A clearance diver was originally a specialist naval diver who used explosives underwater to remove obstructions to make harbours and shipping channels safe to navigate, but the term "clearance diver" was later used to include other naval underwater work. Units of clearance divers were first formed during and after World War II to clear ports and harbours in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe of unexploded ordnance and shipwrecks and booby traps laid by the Germans.
A US Navy work diver is lowered to the sea bed during a dive from the USNS Grasp (T-ARS-51) off the coast of St. Kitts.
Preparing to raise a mine from the seabed
US Navy explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) divers
Lionel 'Buster' Crabb, using the DSEA at Gibraltar, April 1944.
