Long Beach Police Department Marine Unit Takes Delivery of Shark Marine MAKO

The Long Beach Police Department marine unit has taken delivery of a Shark Marine “MAKO” Diver Delivery System adding to their recent purchase of two “Navigator” diver held navigation and sonar imaging systems.

The “MAKO”, manufactured by Shark Marine Technologies Inc. marks a new generation of diver delivery systems with features and capabilities not found in any other diver transport system.

The “MAKO” has the ability to actively control its depth without relying on traditional dive planes which require the vehicle to always be in motion. This allows the MAKO to lift off from the bottom vertically, or to maintain a position in the water column without moving. The MAKO is powered by neutrally buoyant hot-swappable battery pods that can be quickly changed on the surface or while in the water. This allows additional battery pods to be carried on the MAKO increasing the operational range without changing buoyancy. The standard operating range of the MAKO is 14 km (8.6 mi) while at full thrust, greater distances can be achieved at slower speeds.

The MAKO utilizes Shark Marines “Navigator”, diver hand held navigation and sonar imaging system as the control center for its advanced functions. The Navigator adds precise geodetic positioning / navigation and a host of additional sensor options such as forward looking Multibeam sonar, side scan sonar, video systems, magnetometers, radiation detectors etc. to the MAKO, and also take control of the full operation of the MAKO. With the Navigator in control the MAKO is capable of auto heading, auto depth, and features such as “GOTO Target” (the MAKO will head to the currently selected target and stand-off at a selected distance), “GOTO Route” (the MAKO will follow the currently selected survey, target or waypoint route) and Station Keeping (the MAKO will hold its current position). Never before have there ever been such features in a small diver delivery system.

The MAKO can easily transport one or two divers and can tow additional divers, and payloads. The MAKO is so smart that it will even operate without a diver.

When asked for a follow-up comment after their training on the new vehicle, marine team Sgt Steve Smock stated: “The first question everyone asks is, “what does it do? The simple answer is what doesn’t it do. It is incredibly safe for the diver and has a very quick learning curve…Important for our team! It might look like an expensive toy to the boss’s but we are finding ourselves re-thinking how we tackle a dive op and how many fewer divers we need to do the same type of dives.”

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Press Release, July 15, 2013