Florida State University: Underwater Crime Scene Investigation Program

On television’s CSI franchise, the crime scene investigators do their jobs while wearing dapper suits and mini-skirts. When the graduates of this crime scene course go to work, they slip into wetsuits and strap on dive tanks. It’s the first program of its kind in the country, teaching Florida State University students everything from collecting evidence of a murder to handling a hazardous waste spill in open water.

The Underwater Crime Scene program is based at the Florida State University Panama City campus.

The program started in 2003 with a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The government was conducting terrorism training nearby and wanted to know whether there was a scientific, systematic way to process a crime scene underwater, the same way it’s done on land.

As it happened, the Panama City campus of Florida State University already had both a science diving program and a criminology program with instructors who were experienced in forensics. The school put together a panel of cops, crime scene investigators, marine archaeologists and professional divers to design a new hybrid program.

The result was an 18-month course split into five classes covering basic and advanced diving, evidence collection, chemistry, biology and engineering. Students entering the program do not need to know how to dive before enrolling. Classroom and pool training take place at the school’s waterfront complex in Panama City. Diving is done in the Gulf of Mexico, from a retired Coast Guard cutter now named the Seanole.

There are six hours of classes each week, along with homework, gear prep and weekend dives. And the training isn’t just academic. Most semesters, the students work actual crime or disaster scenes at the request of local, state and federal authorities.

So far, instructors and students from the underwater crime scene investigation course have helped out with the collapse of Interstate 10 near Pensacola, a private plane crash in the Atlantic off the coast of St. Augustine and even the Natalee Holloway case in Aruba. Students have been to the island twice to conduct underwater searches for the missing American teen.

Some of the work was so difficult – diving in underwater caves with strong currents – that they had to wear an extra 60 pounds of gear just to keep from getting tossed around by the ocean.

Recently, professor Michael Zinszer assisted the Department of Defense with testing new sensors that would allow military special operators to sense movement and find objects with equipment wired into their tongues.

Students who complete the course receive a minor in underwater crime scene investigation from Florida State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The graduates find themselves with a variety of career option. Some have gone to work for local sheriff’s departments, others to NASA underwater training facilities.