7th day of Refloating Vessel Operation

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On the seventh day we were at the actual location where the ship sank. We have to find the sunken ship using an old sonar and we spent less than 2 hours to find it. We found the sunken ship and anchor down to fix our position. According to the sonars information, it is 210 feet below because of the tide but it should be 190 feet according the captain and the crews of the ship. I know it's part of the of our scuba diving service to risk our lives but that doesn't mean we can just ignore the dangers. We told them that should the reason why the other team have casualties. The ship is too deep, meaning whenever they dive that deep they have to decompress because their live is at stake. The problem is they do not have a supervisor that can take note of the depth for decompressions. As i wrote before, these divers did not have any formal training which a commercial diver should have. They only acquired experience in scuba diving from extracting mussels from rock beneath the ocean or cyanide fishing and they dont even know what is decompression or wether they need it. So five of them died without knowing what realy happened to their comrades. They didn't have diving log book or anything that could track down their dives according to the crews. All of the former crews of the operation suffered bends.

We have our decompression book manual from the US Navy for decompression guide. We use slate and a pencil attached to a rope to tally our depth and decompression time and tie it to our body. Our scuba tank is equiped with depth gauge so we removed the depth gauge and tie it as well to our body. Instead of using scuba tank we use their air compressor. Their air compressor is up and running but they only use ordinary hose and nothing else, they just tie the hose to their hips and bite the end of the hose to breath. To improvise the compressor we attached the second stage regulator at the end of the hose and used adjustable clamp to secure it. At first there is a small bubbles coming out so we fixed it and test it again. Now we are good to go.

Re-floating Operation on 6th day

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We cannot dive and use our scuba tanks since it can only last for 30 mins more or less depending on the depth if we use our single tanks and not more than an hour for our double tank. Our only option is using air compressor since we are going to survey the area not to mention the situation of the sunken ship. So we did our best to fix the air compressor. One of the problem that we encountered was we were in the middle of the sea and we have limited resources but we did fixed it and viola! Air compressor is up and running. Now the problem was the hose that they used from previous divers.

Previous operations was not succesful since most of them died and some of them are still in the hospital as I write this blog. They never saw the hole until we found it. My son hear a very low hissing sound after we turned on the air compressor so we checked out where the sound come from. Divers can still breath using hose only. We cut the hose and tested if it explodes again. After few minutes it did! Same location from the previous hole. actualy it is a crack but the hole was very minute. We cut it again but this time we re-inforced it by putting a 2 inches wide rubber band near the compressor and after few minutes no explosions, so we pressumed it will work better than before.

Re-floating 5th day

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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.

Re-floating Vessel 4th

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The supervisor of this operation set up a meeting in a nearby restaurant. We negotiate for the diving job and agreed on one thing. We have to survey first and approve the reflaoting if it is still possible.

Preparing for the equipment

We bought "O rings" for the scuba tanks and 2 new face mask since me and my son are the only divers that will survey in Sulu Sea and we lost our face mask because someone borrowed it and never returned back. Since we have a new one provided by the company we considered those as scuba diving gifts. It is part of our job anyways. We also request for gloves since our gloves are all worn out. We brought our hoses for alternate supply since according to them they are using air compressor for their divers. They only used air compressor for the entire operation until we came. After completing our scuba diving equipments for the job, we set to sail morning on Monday from the port area. We have a 2 sets of check list for everything that we brought from this operation from our custom knife, our life line, etc...

Refloating Third

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Since I have years of experience re-floating vessels, he called us hoping that we can still save the ship from Sulu Sea. We never said "we can" immediately since we do not know yet the ships situation. So we set up a meeting.

While we are waiting, we prepared our equipment for the diving job offer. We checked our scuba diving equipment hoping there are only few damages and then fix it as soon as possible because we might be called anytime. First we check our scuba tanks that needs to be filled by compressed air. Currently we have 5 sets of scuba tanks. 2 double scuba tanks and 3 single tanks. We also have 2 full body or 2 one piece wet suits and 2 two-piece wet suits. 3 pairs of boots and 3 fins.

(To follow)

Refloating 2

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Mananahong or local scuba divers from the Philippines learned diving through experience but they dont have any knowledge about decompression since most of them are diving only on the safe zone. So they dive without worrying of bends and they dont even know what it is. They only use air compressor to supply air below and they never used scuba diving gears like scuba tanks, wet suits but they use improvised fins made out of marine plywood and improvised facemask.

This fishing company hired them to dive down 210 feet below to install the bouy and to refloat the fishing vessel. Five divers died in that operation and 2 got hospitalised suffering from bends. Before that happens they succesfuly installed bouys but the refloating operation was not succesful. Bouys were installed but it is a potential danger above since it will serve as torpedoes if anything happens to the cable between the bouy and the sunken ship.

Our friend from the this fishing company called us and ask if we can do the job.
That is how we got the scuba diving trip to Sulu.

To be continued...

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)