Dream Job: Two Full-Time Scuba Divers Care for Radisson Blu Hotel Aquarium

Wes Skiles Tribute Video

An absolutely breath-taking video tribute to the passions of the late, great Wes Skiles.


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Aquanauts Living on Ocean Floor Come Up for Air

Wow. Can you imagine a 16-hour deco process? Or, how about spending 9 hours a day diving. And then returning to your underwater lair.

Just another day in the life of these grad students.

From the cramped conditions inside a school-bus-sized metal tube at the bottom of the ocean, scientist Chris Finelli traded his scuba gear for a T-shirt and bare feet, ready to talk about his latest mission: monitoring sponges on Conch Reef, more than three miles off the coast of Florida.

Sponges, bottom-dwelling filter-feeders, are one of two players locked in a silent battle for supremacy that is taking place at these coral reefs and others across the globe.

As coral populations disappear — they're down by 90 percent around Florida — other species are fighting for the newly freed up ocean real estate. The two top contenders to take over are sponges and algae, and which one emerges victorious will have far-reaching consequences for the species that make their homes in coral reefs and for the humans that depend on them.

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Finelli, along with several UNCW grad students and technicians, has been living deep under water for nine days now, aboard the Aquarius, the only seafloor laboratory and habitat in the world. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) owns the facility, which is run by UNCW.

Since 1993, the Aquarius has been stationed 63 feet below the waves, in the protected waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, a few miles off the coast, providing an ideal place to study ocean life and even train astronauts for space missions.

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Divers to Spend a Month Underwater Fixing Century-Old Cheesman Dam

Yet another critical job made possible by SCUBA.

A daring operation is under way, deep under water at Cheesman Reservoir.

Divers are attempting to replace the dam's aging gates which allow water to pass through the structure.

The current gates were installed in 1895, when the dam was built.

The plan for divers to replace the gates was thought to be better than the alternative, which would have required draining the lake.

That’s something that hasn’t been done in more than a century.

Draining the lake could have also jeopardized Denver’s water supply and taken months to refill.

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Divers are installing new stainless steel gates which allow water to pass through the dam. Two teams of two divers working 12 hour shifts are in a pressurized chamber for 28 days straight.

"They’re in a chamber which I guess you could equate to a big propane tank," said Mark Hintz, dive superintendent with Global Diving and Salvage Inc.

The divers are supported on deck by a 20 person crew.

"They have a cook. Good food. You burn a lot of calories in there," said Hintz.

For the entire month the divers live in a chamber and breathe 90 percent helium and 10 percent oxygen, which makes them sound a little like Donald Duck.

"They have a motorcycle looking helmet, or space-like helmet. It’s probably an odd scene if you could see it from the outside," said Hintz.

If all goes well, the dam will be fine for another 100 years. Big pressure -- both literally and figuratively -- on the divers to restore the dam’s aging gates.

"The storage here is about 80,000 acre feet," said Martin.

"Everyone’s got to be safe or they’re not on the job," said Hintz.

The crews "pressed down" on Monday night.

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The Hidden World of Police Divers

As the saying goes: it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Underwater search teams are a familiar sight during major police investigations. But what is it like to make a living probing the country's murkiest recesses?

Submerged in darkness, chilled in near-frozen water, you grope your way through the silt and debris.

Somewhere, amid the sludge and the discarded rubbish, is your quarry: a knife, a gun or a body.

With colleagues on dry land depending on you, how on earth do you find what you are looking for?

For the UK's army of police divers, patrolling rivers, canals and seas is a daily challenge.

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Deadliest Scuba Job in the World

That title would have to belong to suspected terrorist divers of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

The Israeli navy fatally shot at least four Palestinian divers on Monday off the coast of the Gaza Strip who military officials allege were en route to attack Israel.

Two divers were reported to have survived the attack, and another was reported missing.

The divers were members of a violent affiliate of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, known as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a spokesman for one of the brigade divisions said. The spokesman for the group's Palestine division said the divers were on a training mission, unarmed and operating in shallow waters 250 meters from the Gaza coastline.

The Israeli military, in a brief statement, said its forces had fired upon "a squad of terrorists wearing diving suits on their way to execute a terror attack." The statement did not provide specifics of what was planned or say whether the divers had weapons.

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Talking Scuba Discusses Commercial Diving with Adam Czarnopys

Whether you've thought (or are thinking) about becoming a commercial diver or simply wonder about what it entails, here's a cool conversation with commercial diver Adam Czarnopys, discussing different elements of his dive profession.


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Scuba Diver Makes a Living Diving Water Hazards

Hey, the guy makes a living underwater. Can't blame him for that!

One of golf's most famous holes is nice to look at, but it's not one of the nicest.

Every year, about 120,000 golf balls land in the drink at the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass.

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It is a hole where you can win it, or lose it.

And when you lose it, Brian Adams helps get it back.

Adams puts on scuba gear to retrieve what gets lost in the 4-foot pond surrounding the 17th hole. The list of bounty includes golf balls and other things.

"I've had wedding wings and other things, clubs, mainly clubs and golf bags," said Adams. "A golf cart one time."

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A Day in the Life of a U.S. Navy Diver; "We dive the world over"

A very cool article about underwater heroes.

Their motto is, "We dive the world over."

Navy divers go through special training that allows them to do things like explosive ordnance disposal, ship maintenance and salvage.

As KHON2's Jai Cunningham reports, a lot more than just diving goes into the training to make sure these specialist are ready when duty calls.

It's early morning at Pearl Harbor and the work has already started.

More than 60 sailors taking part in P.T., physical training.

"It's kind of a command unity thing. So we try to bring the command together P.T.ing. We have people with a range of fitness here," said Lt. Jennifer Hall.

That range is on the high end, and I found out first hand.

Try circuit training, eight stations, five rounds. That means pull-ups, dips, air squats, pushups - all-around fitness.

This work is important for what these divers and support staff do when called into action.

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Down Economy Sparks Second Careers Underwater

'Underwater' as in the deep and murky kind, nonetheless.

When the economy collapsed, Quinton Ford lost a Texas oil field job he held for nine years. He returned home to New Mexico at the end of his rope for employment opportunities.

Then he grabbed hold of an umbilical air line, strapped on 200 pounds of wet suit, weight belt, ankle weights and other gear, popped a helmet on his head that looked like a cannonball and snapped shut the seal. He's learning commercial diving, taking the plunge into the murk, carrying a welder or tools to fasten together a dozen or more heavy duty flanges and valves, sometimes working almost by feel.

Oh yeah, it's dangerous.

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Scientists Dive the Extremes for Arctic Research

And you thought your place of work got chilly in the winter.

If you want to know how polar bears are doing, it's not enough to spy on them with satellite telemetry and other technology. You have to go where they live.

You have to tap into the stories these bears carry in and on their bodies, and drop in on the tiniest of organisms beneath the places they walk, the ones that feed the shrimp-like creatures that feed the fish that feed the seals that feed the bears.

That's what scientists did for five weeks this fall aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea as they addressed the question: How are polar bears coping with sea-ice loss due to climate change?

To get some answers, they traveled to a part of the world few get to see, and far fewer get to see from beneath the sea ice. Or would want to.

"It's definitely not for everyone," said Katrin Iken, associate professor of marine biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who led the team of ice researchers from UAF.

The ice divers, layered in polypropylene, fleece and dry suits, went to work through holes cut in the ice to gather samples from biological communities associated with sea ice. Tethered to a team member above, they went as deep as 40 feet to explore the bottoms of ice ridges -- the underwater version of the pressure ridges up top -- for a look at what lives down there.

In the big picture, it's all about understanding what melting ice means to the larger food web in the Arctic.

To Iken, the underside of sea ice is a beautiful and fascinating place.

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Don't forget to check out the photos.

Making Le Reve

Whoa! Check this out.


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Navy Deep Sea Diver Pool Week

One word: rad.


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Scuba Instructor is Livin' the Dream

This guy has had quite the career!

The valediction on the e-mail of Cliff Block of the Bahamas is always the same: "Livin’ the dream,” he signs off. By all indications, the native Oklahoman is.

As captain of his own live-aboard 47-foot catamaran, Block leads guests year-round in scuba diving, snorkeling, kayaking, spear fishing and other excursions from Nassau to the Exumas.

"It’s magical. The air is so clean, the water, magnificently beautiful, and I’m not inundated 24 hours a day with ‘shop here,’ ‘vote here’ or ‘get involved in this discussion,’” said Block, who talked by phone last week while he watched a loggerhead turtle under his canal-front dock on Coral Harbour. "It’s pretty, bloody amazing,” he said.

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Army Divers Prepare for Deep Sea Mission

What a cool way to spend your military time in service!

In the Army, engineers routinely fix, tear down and build structures on land.

One such team of engineers does their tasks with an added challenge of an air tank strapped to their backs in depths far lower than commercial divers. The team, consisting of Army divers from the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment is facing the routine challenges engineers encounter during a re-certification training exercise May 11 through May 22 in the coastal waters off the big island of Hawaii.

The 30 Soldiers are diving in a multitude of underwater environments including wrecked ships, reefs, as well as the sea floor to their equipment and hone their skills.

"What we're doing is qualifying on all of our systems and getting the newest divers accustomed to some of the tools we use on a daily basis to make us more mission capable," said Staff Sgt. John Geffert, a salvage diver with the 7th Eng. Dive Det.

The 22-year-old from Hopedale, Mass., said the team is doing everything from SCUBA diving, and hard-hat-diving to instructing diving supervisors on how to handle their dive teams.

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Interested in becoming an Army diver, or simply curious as to what it takes? Check out all the details of the Diver (21D) MOS in the US Army.

As an Army Diver, you'll specialize either as a scuba diver, who works just below the surface of the water, or as a deep sea diver, who usually works for long periods of time in depths up to 190 feet. Some of your duties as a Diver may include:

* Inspect and clean watercraft propellers and hulls
* Patch damaged watercraft hulls using underwater welding equipment
* Salvage sunken equipment
* Patrol the waters below watercraft at anchor
* Assist with underwater construction of piers and harbor facilities
* Survey rivers, beaches, and harbors for underwater obstacles
* Use explosives to clear underwater obstacles

REQUIREMENTS

Divers must be excellent swimmers and be physically strong.

TRAINING

Job training for a Diver requires nine weeks of Basic Training, where you'll learn basic Soldiering skills, and 29 of Advanced Individual Training and on-the-job instruction, including practice in diving and repair work. Part of this time is spent in the classroom and part in the field. Some of the skills you'll learn are:

* Principles of scuba and surface-supplied diving
* Underwater welding and cutting
* Use and care of hand and power tools
* Maintenance of diving equipment
* Explosives

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ADVANCED RESPONSIBILITIES

Advanced level Divers provides guidance, supervises and trains Soldiers within the same discipline. As an advanced level Diver, you may be involved in:

* Perform as a lead diver during underwater work
* Prepare patching materials and pumps for salvage operations
* Prepare explosives for placement
* Prepare rigging and lifting devices for salvage operations
* Assist diving supervisors in preparing equipment for diving operations

Very cool!

First Woman Camera Operator for Cousteau Family has the "Perfect Job"

It probably doesn't get much better than this for a photographer.

While studying French and political science at Wittenberg University, Carrie Vonderhaar wasn't sure how she'd ever use the degrees.

But after learning to scuba dive, and discovering a passion for photography, the Evendale native got a job with environmentalist Jean-Michel Cousteau and his Ocean Futures Society based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

"Every day, I use everything I learned in school," says Vonderhaar, 32, a 1995 Mount Notre Dame graduate.

She's the first woman camera operator for the Cousteau family's TV documentaries, although mostly she shoots still photos under and above water for TV show publicity, books and educational materials.

Most of last year, Vonderhaar photographed whales around the world for two PBS "Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures" specials: "Sea Ghosts" 8 p.m. Wednesday, and "Call of the Killer Whale" April 22.

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Under Pressure as a United States Coast Guard Diver

Here's a great article with insight into some of the missions and challenges faced by a U.S. Coast Guard Diver.

Submerged beneath the cold, murky waters of Elliot Bay are the elite team of Coast Guard members whose typical day in the office consists of being surrounded by cold-blooded aquatic animals while breathing through a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.

Coast Guard Regional Dive Locker West, Maritime Safety and Security Team (MSST) 91109 San Diego, recently deployed to Seattle to support the Coast Guard Cutter Midgett and scavenge for tools accidentally dropped into the water below Station Seattle's boathouse.

The Coast Guard Regional Dive Lockers, West and East, are made of up of dive teams who go below the waters surface to uphold the security of maritime assets and support aids-to-navigation and polar operations. They were established Oct. 1, 2008, and have been highly effective in both the safety of the dive teams and in safeguarding our shores to prevent maritime based terrorist attacks.

"There's about twenty people at each dive locker consisting of both enlisted and officers." said Petty Officer 1st Class David Straky, a Coast Guard Regional Dive Locker West dive team member. "We inspect ships, piers and high value assets for any type of explosive devices; anything that has to do with Homeland Security and anything else the Coast Guard might need us for in the marine environment,"

"We do pier sweeps and ship sweeps," said Petty Officer 1st Class Victor Leon, a Coast Guard Regional Dive Locker West dive team member. "If there's an important asset coming in through the port, we'll go in there, dive, clear the pier and make sure there are no underwater threats."

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A Conversation with Underwater Lifestyle and Beauty Photographer, Tracy Kahn

Courtesy of About the Image.

We have a special treat for you today. We are speaking with photographer, Tracy Kahn. She is going to let us know a little bit about her career, underwater. Tracy has a unique specialty of shooting people underwater. She uses state of the art underwater digital equipment, as well as a variety of lighting techniques to create stunning, high quality underwater images. After years of experience shooting people underwater, Tracy has mastered the art of casting and working with models in the underwater environment, making them feel comfortable and at ease. She is PADI diver certified, and loves to shoot sea life in the ocean as well!

Read the interview...

Also, be sure to check out Tracy Kahn's web site: www.tracykahn.com. We especially like her H2O gallery -- but that goes without saying!

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Aquarium Diver Swallows Tiny Camera as a Test

The good news? Tiny camera-pills doctors use to see the digestive tracks of humans may be used to peek at the innards of sick whales and dolphins.

When big animals like belugas and whale sharks become ill, veterinarians have to catch them and sedate them to do the blood work, take stool samples and do other invasive procedures to diagnose their illness, said Greg Bossart, the aquarium’s chief veterinary officer.

That can stress the animals, he said.

If, however, they could swallow a pill that would allow veterinarians to see inside their systems, they could be helped without being bothered, he said.

“This is supposed to be non-invasive,” Bossart said. “That’s the beauty of this, it does not hurt the animal at all.”

The test is a first for aquariums, Bossart said, and the cutting-edge technology could change the way big animals like dolphins, grouper and whales are managed.

The bad news? It's expensive.

The camera-pills costs about $500 each and an accompanying receiver that records the images costs about $5,000, said Greg Seitz, marketing product manger of Given Imaging, maker of the pill. The pill, which has been used on humans since 2001, can be used only one time.

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Navy Diver Attacked by Shark During Anti-terrorism Training

And he was apparently able to punch his way out of the situation.

A diver with the Australian navy fought off a shark after he was attacked in Sydney Harbor while taking part in anti-terror drills.

The 31-year-old elite diver, who was not identified, punched the shark twice as he tried to ward it off.

He was swimming on the surface of the water in Woolloomoolloo Bay near the naval headquarters at Garden Island with a fellow diver just before 7 a.m. when the attack occurred.

Moments before the attack, he reportedly saw a large dark shape beneath him.

The shark disappeared after being punched, leaving the diver with severe wounds to his right hand and thigh.

As the article notes, the divers' rescuers said that despite the severity of his wounds he was conscious and in "good humor."

We divers are a curious bunch.