 More than 80 marines with First Marine Expeditionary Force conducted their annual swim qualification under the new requirements at Kent Pendleton, California. We had to swim across the pool, next we had to jump off the tower, we had to tread water for about four minutes and then we had to take off our flat kevlar and everything 10 seconds and after that we had to swim back across with the main pack. Qualification standards were changed to provide a more practical means of measuring the abilities of marines to survive in water. Marines must wear their uniform with their boots on for the entire qualification. It's not the way swim quality used to be where we didn't have boots on with the boots it actually adds a little bit more of a realism to it because by far off the boat I'd rather not have swim with my boots on than without them.