Fleet Diving Unit 3 – the specialist Royal Navy Diving Unit with its ten strong team of explosive ordnance disposal divers has been busy keeping the Gulf port safe during major mine exercise.    British and Dutch divers are working side by side in the warm, salty waters of Bahrain port as part of a major Gulf exercise dealing with the threat of mines.    Fleet Diving Unit 3 are the Royal Navy's specialist shallow water divers, experts in keeping ports and harbours free of mines.

Fleet Diving Unit 3 deployed for the two week exercise to a rather drab jetty in Bahrain’s Mina Salman port, fresh from taking part in the Joint Warrior war games in Scotland, when they were working in much cooler waters off Campbeltown.     The Fleet Diving Unit 3 equipment can be contained in a couple of “chacon” containers (what are they ?) which, with a tent, also serve as their home.   Technology substantially helps the work of team of explosive ordnance disposal divers, notably the REMUS 100 (the 100 signifies the depth in metres it works to), an autonomous underwater vehicle – robot submersible.    About half the length of a torpedo, it ‘flies’ about three metres above the seabed, looking for anything unusual – its side-scan sonar can pick up something as small as a 500ml bottle of water.    It’s set off on a pre-programmed route by the dive team.    It will take about three to four hours to search a square kilometre of seabed and a similar amount of time to process the data.