DESCRIPTION:
Home video of the April 2015 joint Royal Canadian Navy and Parks Canada Agency dive on the wreck of HMS Erebus, the flagship of Sir John Franklin's ill-fated 1845 mission.

The dive occurred as an element of Operation Nunalivut under the command of Joint Task Force North in Yellowknife. This is the Canadian Armed Forces' annual winter readiness exercise in the Arctic and the naval element is a regular feature, albeit the complexity and austerity of the wreck site pushed the Fleet Diving Unit divers to new levels of operational readiness.

The exercise and the dive component were enabled by the support of the RCAF, Canadian Army, and Canadian Rangers amongst others who are central to successful operations in the north no matter the season. The Navy and Parks Canada divers trained together before deployment, formalizing joint techniques, safety practices and coherent military command and control. Although not a typical pairing, both teams learned considerably from each other, development that will serve their unique mandates going forward in best practices, new equipment and diving doctrine.

Imagine that this readiness affords the Canadian Armed Forces the requisite experiential development and broad stakeholder engagement to be able to dive for an airliner black box, satellite debris or even the wreckage of a modern shipping casualty. For the navy's part, the experiential development of our sailors in increasingly complex arctic operations is essential skill broadening apace the construction (2015), crewing (2016) and commissioning (2018) of the new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships.