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Monarch spotted next to oil rig: OMSI, Coast Guard developing salvage plan for sunken vessel

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The MV Monarch, the 166-foot vessel which rolled and sank Thursday after being pinned against the Granite Point oil platform, was discovered around 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

After an unsuccessful search Friday, sonar technicians aboard the oil service vessel, Champion, located the Monarch about 10 feet south of the southwest leg of the platform, said Petty Officer Sara Francis, spokeswoman for the Coast Guard. The Monarch is at an angle, with its stern facing northwest and its bow facing southeast, said Jim Butler, spokesperson for Ocean Marine Services Inc., which owns and operates the vessel.

Salvage activity to be filmed in Gulf of Mexico

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BY KEVIN LOLLAR • [email protected]

A group of modern-day explorers is preparing to search the Gulf of Mexico for underwater wreck sites of historical value – they also hope to have a documentary about their 2008 adventures ready by the end of the year.

Last year, Tim Wicburg, Brian Ulman, Tom O’Brien and Jon “Hammerhead” Hazelbaker TBT&J (which stands for Tim, Brian, Tom and Jon) launched an expedition to find a pile of gold bullion.

They ended up solving a 66-year-old mystery and created Underwater Historical Explorations to continue their work.

cDiver.net Gaining Momentum

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After having only gone live on the 15th, we’ve already seen some numbers that we’re pretty excited about and wanted to share them with everyone!

In 4 short days, cDiver.net has already:

  • Reached over 100 members in the Diver Community
  • Seen 900 unique visitors to the website
  • Over 20 dive companies represented on our jobs board

I just wanted to thank everyone who has participated and helped to spread the word about cDiver.net.  I’m hoping to turn this into THE place to go for Commercial Divers to find work, to stay up to date on the industry and to get involved int he diving community.  If there’s anything that we can be doing better, please let us know.

Cheers!

DDRC Hyperbaric Medical Centre releases 2009 Training Schedule

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DDRC develops and prepares courses to suit client-specific needs in any field relating to Hyperbarics and Diving.

Please contact us  if you require further information.

Download the 2009 course schedule (116KB pdf).

DDRC to launch Offshore Medic Course

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The DDRC Offshore Medics Course is primarily a work based approach to Emergency Care. The course has been designed to be ‘proactive’ not ‘reactive’ and teaches practical first aid, diagnosis and treatment with offshore/remote skills. The techniques are flexible and adaptable to enable candidates to apply their skills in different environments.

For more information see the DDRC Training website.

OGP Executive Director to secretariat: prioritise in tougher times

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January 2009

Following a good year for OGP, with significant achievements in advocacy, benchmarking and spreading best practice, the Association starts 2009 from a position of strength, Executive Director Charles Bowen told a meeting of the secretariat on 9 January.

‘And that’s just as well,’ he continued, ‘because the present economic climate could mean a difficult year ahead. An immediate impact on this will be a reduction in travel budgets ‘and this will lead to fewer members attending fewer meetings,’ he noted. A likely outcome of this is less member involvement in terms of sweat equity, which would inevitably mean more demands on the Association’s secretariat. ‘After all, the expectations of members will not change – and quite rightly.’

To live up to those expectations, OGP will have to work better and harder, Charles said. For example, the Association is looking to install media conferencing facilities in London to minimise travel requirements for members. ‘And now more than ever, it is essential that we concentrate all our efforts on the issues that are most critical to the industry. We must not be drawn into secondary areas,’ Charles said.

‘The industry we serve is operating in a new context. OGP has to work within that context as well,’ Charles insisted.

Glenn Flint dam to be repaired

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Thursday, January 8, 2009
 

The dam at Glenn Flint Lake will be receiving some repairs when the weather cooperates again.The 30-year-old dam has a broken bolt in the sluice gate, which is used to regulate or modulate the flow of water. The busted bolt is causing the gate to stay slightly raised.  

The current gate could be fully opened, if it needed to be, explained Kathy Deer, administrative secretary for the Little Walnut Creek Conservancy District. “It may not move as easily or properly as it should.”

The Department of Natural Resource requires the gate to be completely down.

To fix the bolt and its bracket, Little Walnut Creek Conservancy District board of directors have called in a professional dive team.

Underwater Construction Corporation and its staff of more than 200 divers, supervisors and project managers operate from three regional locations in Connecticut, Michigan and Tennessee. UCC will bring in three experienced commercial diving contractors, most likely from Michigan.

They will retrieve and repair the gate valve in 40 feet of water. It is expected to take eight hours to complete the task.

Divers visited Glenn Flint in August to assess the problem and what it would take to fix.

UCC has proposed it would cost slightly more than $8,100 to replace the valve. The board accepted the proposal during its meeting on Wednesday.

Repairs are expected to begin when the lake is at its driest.

© 2009 Greencastle Banner Graphic

U.S. Department of Labor's OSHA cites International Diving Services for safety violations following investigation of worker's drowning in Paris, Texas

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Region 6 News Release: OSHA 08-1656-DAL
Nov. 10, 2008
Contact: Diana Petterson Elizabeth Todd
Phone: 972-850-4709 972-850-4710
 

U.S. Department of Labor’s OSHA cites International Diving Services for safety violations following investigation of worker’s drowning in Paris, Texas

ARLINGTON, Texas — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited International Diving Services of Arlington for safety violations following its investigation of an accident in Paris, Texas, in which a diver was killed.

OSHA’s Dallas Area Office began its investigation following the May 13 accident that took place at a water treatment facility in Paris, Texas, where a diver’s lifeline became entangled in the water pump of a 500,000- gallon in-ground water tank.

“The employer failed to ensure appropriate safety procedures were followed for entry into a permit-required confined space and failed to control the hazardous energy that ultimately took this employee’s life,” said Stephen Boyd, OSHA’s area director in Dallas.

OSHA cited the company with two alleged willful violations and three alleged serious violations. The willful violations involve failure to conduct a safety and health assessment for surface and underwater conditions when planning diving operations and to brief dive team members of any hazards or environmental conditions that may affect the safety of the diving operation. The serious violations involve entry into a confined space without verification it was safe for entry; the employer’s failure to ensure that the supervisor verified all tests were conducted, and all equipment and procedures were in place in accordance with confined space requirements; and failure to develop and document procedures for the control of potential hazardous energy.

The citations carry $64,400 in proposed penalties.

A willful citation is issued for violations committed with disregard of or plain indifference to the requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and regulations. OSHA defines a serious violation as a condition that exists where there is a substantial possibility death or serious physical harm can result.

The employer has 15 business days from receipt of the citations to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area director in Dallas, or contest the citations and penalties before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Employers and employees with questions regarding workplace safety and health standards may contact OSHA’s Dallas Area Office at 214-320-2400 or call the agency’s toll-free hotline at 800-321-6742 to report workplace accidents, fatalities or situations posing imminent danger to employees.

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace for their employees. For more information, visitwww.osha.gov.

Robot sub discovers secrets of the deep that could predict a natural disaster

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One of the world’s deepest-diving robot submarines has returned from its first mission with spectacular images of giant holes on the seabed and evidence of underwater avalanches.

Autosub6000, which was developed by British scientists, descended almost three miles below the surface to investigate a submarine canyon north of the Canary Islands.

Its next mission is to investigate the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, one of Europe’s worst natural disasters, in which more than 10,000 people died.

The successful first dive this week formed part of a research expedition investigating potential threats to Western European coasts from tsunamis, giant landslides and earthquakes.
On its return to the surface, 24 hours after its launch, it provided scientists with three-dimensional images showing holes in the sea floor the size of Wembley Stadium – evidence of giant underwater avalanches in the past, and a potential cause of tsunamis in the future.

The robot’s success was a relief to its creators. A previous underwater autonomous vehicle (AUV) developed from the same £10 million research programme was dispatched to investigate the underside of the Antarctic ice shelf in 2005 but never returned. “It’s always slightly nerve-racking launching an AUV,” Steve McPhail, the team leader, said.

Unlike most undersea robots, the £1.5 million submarine dives without cables connecting it to the surface, travelling for up to 330km (205 miles) before returning to the surface to rendezvous with the Royal Research Ship James Cook.

Autosub6000, which was developed at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton, can dive to a depth of 6,000 metres – nearly four miles – allowing it to reach 93 per cent of the world’s seabed.While spiralling downwards on the journey from ship to seabed, the craft can be sent off track by tides and currents, so Autosub6000 receives an acoustic position correction from its mother ship once it has arrived on the ocean floor.

Speaking to The Times from the James Cook, 200 miles southwest of Portugal, Russell Wynn, the expedition’s chief scientist, said: “This new technology is allowing us to image the sea floor in unprecedented detail, and is providing valuable information about the huge scale and immense power of these giant submarine flows.”

More than 95 per cent of the sea floor is known only from crude bathymetric data, whose resolution can miss mountains. Autosub6000 travelled at 100 metres above the seabed to scan a 16 sq km area with its onboard multi-beam sonar, and returned an image that shows objects as small as 2m wide.

The increased resolution allows the UK-led research team, involving scientists from Spain, Portugal and Russia, to drill cores accurately above and below the avalanche scars, known as scours, and so discover how and when many landslides have occurred.

“We have found that giant landslides are actually quite rare around the Canary Islands, with no major activity in the last 15,000 years,” Dr Wynn said.

“At the moment we don’t even know where the Lisbon quake originated,” he added. “We hope that new data from the deep ocean will provide information about the potential future threat to coastal communities.”

The research expedition began in the Canary Islands on August 5 and is scheduled to finish in the UK on September 3. The last stop on the journey is in the Bay of Biscay, where Autosub6000 will investigate the origins of the catastrophic megaflood that burst through the Straits of Dover, creating the British Isles hundreds of thousands of years ago.

source: www.timesonline.co.uk

ST Engineering-Contract for Survey Vessel

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Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (ST Engineering) announced that its marine arm, Singapore Technologies Marine Ltd (ST Marine), has secured a S$30m contract to provide detailed design, construction and outfitting of a 228 ft seismic survey vessel for Swire Pacific Offshore Operations (Pte) Ltd (SPO), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Swire Pacific Limited.

Construction is expected to commence in May 2009 and delivery is planned for the second half of 2010. This contract is not expected to have any material impact on the consolidated net tangible assets per share and earnings per share of ST Engineering for the current financial year.

This 223 ft by 49 ft seismic survey vessel, with medium speed diesel propulsion of 2 x 2880 kw, will be designed, constructed, completed and delivered in compliance with the rules, regulations and with all requirements of and under the survey of American Bureau of Shipping, and shall be distinguished in the registry by the symbol and annotation of ABS Class +A1, +AMS, ACCU, SPS, E, Ice Class Notation C. Seismic survey vessels are capable of driving at a selected surveying speed through the water and the hull form of the marine seismic survey vessel is arranged to produce low wake field turbulence as it is widely used in the offshore oil and gas exploration field.

(www.stengg.com)