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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Norwegian Court Overturns Lawsuit by Deep Sea Divers

If you remember, almost a year ago we brought you the story of the deep sea divers who sued the Norwegian government.

Well, the story is back in the news as a Norwegian court has overturned the divers' settlement.

An appeals court on Tuesday overturned a nearly 30 million kroner ($4.2 million) settlement for three deep sea divers who claim their health was ruined by Norway's early quest for offshore oil wealth.

In August 2007, the Oslo district court ordered the government to compensate the three men in a case that could have brought a rash of similar lawsuits. However, the Borgarting appeals overturned that ruling, saying the government could not be held responsible for their injuries.

When Norway, now one of the world's major oil exporters, was first developing its North Sea fields in the 1970s and 1980s, divers were sent to extreme and sometimes experimental depths to maintain and install equipment.

The so-called pioneer divers from the early years of Norway's offshore oil development - Magn Haakon Muledal, Angus Gunnar Kleppe, and Dag Vilnes - said they will appeal the case to the Supreme Court. It was not clear when the case would be heard.

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What do you think?

New York Hires 6 Deep-Sea Divers to Repair Water Tunnel

It's a deep job, but somebody's got to do it.

All tunnels leak, but this one is a sieve. For most of the last two decades, the Rondout-West Branch tunnel — 45 miles long, 13.5 feet wide, up to 1,200 feet below ground and responsible for ferrying half of New York City’s water supply from reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains — has been leaking some 20 million gallons a day. Except recently, when on some days it has lost up to 36 million gallons.

After tiptoeing around the problem for many years, and amid mounting complaints of flooded homes in the Ulster County hamlet of Wawarsing, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection has embarked on a five-year, $240 million project to prepare to fix the tunnel — which includes figuring out how to keep water flowing through New Yorkers’ faucets during the repairs. The most immediate tasks are to fix a valve at the bottom of a 700-foot shaft in Dutchess County so pumps will eventually be able to drain the tunnel, and to ensure that the tunnel does not crack or collapse while it is empty.

For this, the city has enlisted six deep-sea divers who are living for more than a month in a sealed 24-foot tubular pressurized tank complete with showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop, breathing air that is 97.5 percent helium and 2.5 percent oxygen, so their high-pitched squeals are all but unintelligible. They leave the tank only to transfer to a diving bell that is lowered 70 stories into the earth, where they work 12-hour shifts, with each man taking a four-hour turn hacking away at concrete to expose the valve.

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Two Shipwreck Scuba Divers Hurt by Trapped Air Explosion

Wreck diving can be -- and is -- extremely exciting and rewarding. However, divers must never forget that underwater wrecks bring a whole new set of risks to the table.

Two divers involved in the salvaging of a sunken cargo vessel in Culasi town in Antique were taken to the hospital Monday after being hit by trapped air from one of the vessel's compartments.

Primitivo Morales and Rodel Lazaro were given medical treatment first at the Culasi District Hospital and later confined at the Aklan provincial hospital in the capital town of Kalibo after they complained of difficulty of breathing, Coast Guard Western Visayas District commander Commodore William Melad said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Melad said the two divers were less than 30 feet under water and were boring holes on a compartment of the M/V Ocean Papa when an explosion-type force knocked them off.

“Trapped air or pressure inside the compartment could have been released when the holes were bored,” said Melad.

Aside from difficulty of breathing, the divers suffered no other injuries.

Lazaro is set to be released from the hospital after undergoing observation but Morales will still be confined because he was found to be already suffering from diabetes and a previous respiratory ailment.

The divers are part of a 10-member salvaging team of the CV Gaspar Salvage and Lighterage Company that has been cutting up the vessel into pieces and transported to the shore.

Oil Price Increases Creating New Dive Jobs

Looking for a bright side to the rising cost of oil?

The soaring price of oil has encouraged a significant number of construction workers to re-train as offshore divers, according to industry experts.

The North Sea boom coincides with a downturn in the building trade.

The Underwater Centre, in Fort William, is one dive training base reporting a rise in numbers of potential new recruits to the trade.

It expects up to 400 new divers to qualify this year. Trainees include a construction worker from the US.

Senior instructor Ali Macleod said the skills he learned as a builder on dry land were suited to construction underwater.

He said: "There has never been a better time for getting offshore and the opportunities that are around just now are phenomenal.

Commercial Scuba Divers Discover "A Whole Bunch of Guns"

There is something eerily "Hollywood" about commercial scuba divers finding dozens of potentially crime-related guns at the bottom of a river.

Divers doing underwater construction on the Chef Pass Bridge said they have found dozens of guns they believe have been tossed into the waterway.

Eagle Diving was contracted by the state of Louisiana to do underwater repairs on the bridge near Venetian Isles. But they’ve been finding more than they expected during their dives.

"We’ve been finding a whole bunch of guns. I’ve never found a gun in the water before in my life. And suddenly we’re finding dozens of them," diver John Bennett said.

Bennett and his divers have found so many guns in the waterway that connects Lake Pontchartrain to Lake Bourne that they’ve stopped bringing them to the surface.

Bennett called police officers after he found the first gun, and said he will call them again to come collect dozens more. He hopes the guns can be used an evidence to reopen cold cases.

"If one of my kinfolk had been killed by one of these guns, I would hope somebody would turn something in," Bennett said.

The guns are badly deteriorated from sitting in the water. Officers told Bennett too much damage had been done that investigators would probably not be able to conduct ballistics tests on the weapons.

But upon further research, it appears these guns were likely some of thousands of weapons sent to a watery grave by New Orleans Police Department back in the 1950s.

As a young radio technician for the New Orleans Police Department in the 1950s, Bob Falcon was told by a friend that he ought to see what was happening on the bridge over Chef Menteur Pass.

So Falcon and other technicians took a detour while working on a radio tower in the area and watched as NOPD officers and trustys shoveled guns from pickups through the drawbridge and into the water below.

"It was an interesting thing to watch, no big deal about it," Falcon said. "They were getting overloaded in the property room and they had to get rid of this stuff. They couldn't sell it and it was the only way to dispose of it."

Falcon and others say that a large cache of guns recently found in the waterway by a diving crew installing electrical lines under the bridge was likely some of thousands of weapons sent to a watery grave by NOPD decades ago.

See also: Cache of Guns Discovered at Bottom of Chef Pass