Over the past year members of The DIR Projects SREU have been discussing with the Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia the idea of our team working on deep water projects.  

In the mean time a number of our divers have gone through the UASBC taught Intro to NAS and NAS 1 curriculum.  This has given us the opportunity to learn about underwater archaeology, survey techniques, and to get some experience doing simple surveys.  In July of 2009 our team had its first success in this partnership when we physically located a target that was believed by the UASBC to be a ship in 240 feet of water.  A team of our divers, Mark Gottfried and Ray LeFrense, executed a successful dive onto what turned out to be an intact scuttled wooden sailing ship.  

In October of 2009 the UASBC Board confirmed support for a joint project to conduct a simple survey and video documentation of another wreck target in 240 of water.  This project will take place over a two day period.  In preperation for this our team will be conducting a survey project on a well known shallow wreck in Deep Cove, Victoria in February.

We are excited about the opportunity to take part in an archaeological project.  We hope that this will be the first in a long series of successful projects working with the UASBC.

Dan MacKay was in Victoria this week to teach a GUE Tech 2 course held at Beyond Deep Diving.  The conditions top side for the week were excellent, while underwater visibility averaged about 5'.  The two students were Kim Anderson and myself, and Guy Shockey was a big help shooting the video for the week.

For Kim and I it had been a relatively long stretch between our Tech 1 in 2006 and this course.  Some things, like the standards, had changed a little while other things, like the training materials, had improved in leaps and bounds.  

The course spanned five days with the first two days consisting of skills dives and the last three days consisting of experience dives.  There were two apparent foci of the training dives.  The first was ascending through the water column with precision while moving bottles around and making gas switches.  The second was the nine valve failures covered in Tech 1.  All three experience dives are done utilizing a bottom stage and two decompression gasses.  These three dives are progressive starting with 21/35, then 18/45 and finally ending with 15/55.  

Any GUE Tech 1 diver preparing for a GUE Tech 2 course will want to master the Tech 1 level skills while keeping buoyancy within a plus or minus 18" window and trim within 20% of perfect.  This really is the best focus for pre-course preparation, as well as gaining the experience at the Tech 1 depth level.

Unfortunately I woke up on day five with a nasty head cold and was not able to do the last expereince dive.  Because there were only two of us in the course Kim was not able to do the dive either.  So we will anxiously await Dan's return in July to finish up and with any luck will have some better visibility.

Goodluck to Alan and Josey on their GUE Tech 2 next week!

Chris Fenton

Over the past several months Jeremy Hoey, Guy Shockey, and Mark Gottfried, and I have been working on plans for an ambitious project that will be open to all members of The DIR Project.

Today we are very excited to announce the Shipwreck Research and Exploration Unit (SREU).

The SREU's mandate will be to research, (re)discover, dive and document the many shipwrecks of British Columbia. We hope, and encourage, all DIR Project members to participate.

The SREU's work will be broadly split into four areas:

1. Academic and historical research: this will be an ongoing endeavour utilizing a wide array of historical document sources.
   
2. Field Research: where historical research provides us with plausible leads, we will then seek to pinpoint the location of wrecks through sidescan sonar, magnetic anomaly detection and in water scooter-aided searches.
3. Exploration & Surveying: once wrecks have been accurately located, we will send dive teams to explore, survey, and document them with video and photo.
4. Documentation: the results of our research, exploration and surveying will be organized and made available to the public via our searchable online database in the form of dive reports, videos, image galleries, 3D models, and more. Jeremy has created an amazing database to store all of the information we gather throughout the lifetime of this project. 

The Shipwreck Research and Exploration Unit will adhere to many of the same ethical principles that govern the Underwater Archaelogical Society of British Columbia. In particular: to document, but never remove, any artefacts from a wreck site without proper documentation/authorization. We encourage SREU members to join the UASBC and anyone interested in joining can do so at: http://www.uasbc.com/forms/joinusform.cfm

This is a big undertaking, and one that will require volunteers with a wide array of abilities and interests. We have a chance to do something really special here, so we welcome and encourage everyone to participate!

Safe dives,

Chris Fenton

We will be making more announcements soon as we organize our first field expeditions. Until then, for additional information, please visit the SREU page.

 

If you would like to volunteer, or if you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, please email Chris Fenton.