Re-floating 5th day

(continuation)

Scuba diving equipment for our job is complete and packed neatly in a bag. Our set of Scuba wet suits our 2 sets of fins 2 single scuba tanks and a 2 double tanks and everything.

When we arrived at the port area everybody is busy with their work. We are boarding a fishing vessel that is going to Sulu Sea. It is hard to hop on a boat to another while you were carrying heavy things. You might drop things and your equipment might be damaged if your not careful enough. So as we hop in to a boat to another some of our equipment are carried out by one of the crew of the boat that we are going to board.

We are very much excited as we fix our scuba diving equipment and our beds but the problem is the boat that we are boarding does not have enough room for all the crews of the ship. We fix our sleeping area by installing 2 cradles outside the quarters. Good thing we have bag of clothes to serve as our pillows. It is big and a very old fishing vessel. So we set to sail between 9-10am. My son I was planning our operation after we checked their available equipment .

We checked out their ship for a tour for a better view. We checked out their kitchen and their storage area for the captured fish. Storage area was full of crashed ice ready for preserving those fish. It was full of tubs designed for heavy loads. We also checked their air compressor that was used by previous divers but found out some problems. Air compressors is failing to work so we check out what we can do to fix it. They used sub standard hoses so whenever a diver uses it part of the hose explode so they have to cut the part and have to fix the attachment to the air compressor. It is very old but still working.

Fishing Vessel Refloating

I would like to discuss my scuba diving experience in Sulu Sea for refloating a vessel from one of the biggest fishing company here in the Philippines.

One of their old fishing vessel sank and they would like to hire us to salvage it hoping that they can still use it again.

Their fishing vessel starts in Manila on Monday and goes to Palawan or Sulu Sea near Zamboanga in Mindanao and goes back to Manila around Friday to drop all the captured fish in Navotas. But one of their vessel sank in the middle of Sulu Sea with more or less 200 feet or around 60 meters deep. That is the maximum depth reachable by a French level 3 diver accompanied by another level 3 diver, breathing air.

One of their helper happens to be our friend and recommends us to do the diving job. He knew about the sunken vessel and heard about the job order but he just ignore it before. But the team leader of the project wanted to resolve it as soon as possible. To get the job done in the most economical way, he decided to hire "mananahong" or scuba divers from the Philippines that use air compressor and a hose to supply air below. They thought commercial divers are too expensive to hire.


(To be continued tomorrow)

Commercial Diving Careers

Some are wondering what jobs do we have if you want to work as a commercial diver. No it is not just for fish viewing or checking corals and taking pictures from the oceanfloor. Serious jobs are waiting if your qualified and I am talking about < US$1,000 / Month salary here and that is only for minimum depending on your employer and your location.

Here is the list:

Survey and Inspection Photography
Survey and Inspection Videography
Pipe Laying
Salvaging Vessels
Re-floating Vessels
Pier / Jetty Pile Cleaning
Hull and Propeller Cleaning
Underwater Cutting
Underwater Welding
Dredging
Search and Recovery
Pier Pile Repair and Rehabilitation
Pile Jacketing
Commercial diving services
Exploration of site
Installation, Repair and Maintenance of mooring buoys

SCUBA Diving

SCUBA stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA).
You have two options for scuba diving. Open circuit or Rebreather sets.
For Open circuit system you can use scuba set, diving cylinders containing breathing gas at high pressure.
For Rebreather sets or AKA Closed-circuit breathing system. This will allow you to recycle what you exhaled that will reduce the volume of gas use thus making rebreather lighter compare to open circuit. It was initialy design for covert operations for military but later used for scientific and media divers.
The alternative for the open/close circuit system circuit would be using air compressor on the surface paired w/ umbilical. It could be with diving helmets, full face diving masks or connected to the mouthpiece with a regulator. But there are groups in the Philippines that use air compressor with umbilical only to supply air without mouthpiece! They are called Mananahong. They dive to get tahong or saltwater mussel.