EPRON was established on 17 December 1923 and was initially under the
Joint State Political Directorate () at the
Council of People's Commissars. Its first operation was treasure-hunting near
Sevastopol for the wreckage of
HMS Prince, a steamship sunk by a storm off
Balaklava in November 1854 when it was carrying gold from Britain to pay British troops fighting in the Crimea (GBP 200,000). The project team was financed, equipped, trained and managed by Japanese diving specialists, who had become highly experienced through salvaging warships of the
Russian Imperial Navy sunk or scuttled during the 1904–1905
Russo-Japanese War. The wreckage was allegedly located but there were no reports of gold being found in the quantities that had been initially deemed. After that EPRON extended its operations to rescue and salvaging sunken ships, gradually absorbing other diving units (less experienced and/or worse equipped) and creating new ones. In 1929 EPRON became the sole body in the USSR responsible for all kinds of work under water - in marine operations, hydraulic and river engineering, mining, wreckage and derelict logging and utilizing, etc. In 1931 it was transferred from the
OGPU as a department to the
People's Commissariat of Communication Routes. In 1936 EPRON was subordinated to NKVT ( - "People's Commissariat (Ministry) of Sea and River Transport"); in 1939 - further to NKMF ( - "People's Commissariat (Ministry) of the Merchant Navy"). By 1941 EPRON had rescued 36 ships and raised 74 sunken ships with total weight of about 25,000 GRT. In 1941 naval rescue and salvage units were transferred to the
Soviet Navy (still under the name EPRON); in 1942 it was renamed the
Emergency Rescue Service of the Navy (
Аварийно-спасательная служба ВМФ), which became the
Search and Emergency Rescue Service of the Navy (
поисково-спасательная служба ВМФ) in 1979. ==Notable commanders==