Defence Team News: Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1
Video / October 25, 2023
Transcript
LCdr Crowder: Specifically in the Mine Warfare Group, the Canadian Navy has actually maintained a decades-long presence in NATO Response Forces. There’s thousands of mines in the Baltic, and particularly in the Bay of Riga. And we use that as an opportunity to not only practice our mine hunting skills, but then to do live explosive ordnance disposal, where we countermine World War II and World War I ordnance of which, Shawinigan and Summerside each managed to countermine three World War II mines.
PO2 Killawee: Here on Op REASSURANCE, I’m part of a three-person team. We take an autonomous underwater vehicle out and perform side-scan sonar and we look for mines, and we bring it back to the ship and we perform post-mission analysis on the that data we bring. And then we present that information to the divers, and the divers will go dive on it and determine whether it was an actual mine, and what they’ll do next.
S1 Porelle: I’m a clearance diver as part of this MCM Task Group. So, our job… We get the AUV to find our mines and then myself and my six other dive partners, we will verify and destroy mines in the Baltic Sea or the Northern Sea, depending on where we are tasked to.
S1 Porelle: The biggest challenge in diving on our side, I found in the Baltic Sea, was the low visibility in the depth we were diving in. The visibility was near none. Soon as you cross ten meters, it’s pitch black. Even if you look up you can’t see any visibility. In the Northern Sea we found a lot of issues with currents, strong currents, and making sure we’re diving at the right time. Part of when the currents are the lowest.
S1 Porelle: The team dynamic… We’re a very small trade. Only a hundred clearance divers in Canada. So this team on this ship, on Shawinigan, is made up of six divers and so is the Summerside, of six divers. Everyone understands and trusts each other. Everyone’s lives in each other’s hands. We trust each other for everything we do.