Despite being equipped for most eventualities, the majority of the team's jobs don't require anything as complicated as a boat. The team's responsibilities include security searches of drains and sewers along routes to be taken by visiting royalty and other dignitaries. While not under water, the full kit is worn on these jobs to combat the pollution risk and make the job slightly less unpleasant. This ability to work unhindered by smell and infection has not gone unnoticed by other areas of the force. Consequently, police divers are now routinely called upon to deal with cases involving badly decomposed bodies, which can present a health risk to those who have to deal with them.
Routine training dives often take place at popular dumping grounds for stolen goods.
While I was with them they were called on to search a particularly nasty-smelling culvert round the back of the Avonmouth sewage works. It was believed that some stolen mailbags had been dumped there, and these were duly recovered. In the process they also recovered a set of alloy car wheels and a motorcycle frame. Stolen goods, weapons, even vehicles and sometimes the most unlikely objects are all recovered from some pretty obscure places. Take for example the two 'bodies' recovered from a river in Somerset.