Diving Canada’s East Coast for virgin shipwrecks

For Terry Dwyer, diving is all about shipwrecks – but not just any wreck. Exploring the same wrecks that dozens of others have viewed is not for him. He’s looking for “virgin” wrecks that no one else has seen.

“I think divers need a purpose to keep them diving,” he says. “I prefer exploring. It’s more fun, it’s an adventure and it’s motivating. I got into scuba solely to dive for wrecks. For me, it’s always been about wrecks and always about a purpose. I’m not a fan of run-of-the-mill commercial charters for known wrecks.”

Dwyer, of Halifax, remembers watching Jacques Cousteau on television when he was 14. He had Cousteau’s encyclopedia and watched his movies. At 16, he learned to scuba dive and discovered his first wreck.

He is a big advocate of diving off the coasts of Nova Scotia, where he says there are more than 10,000 shipwrecks. There are several reasons for this, both geographic and historical. When you combine a hazardous coastline with arriving ships from Europe whose crews were not only unfamiliar with its waters but also did not have the luxury or benefit of today’s technology, you have a recipe for frequent disasters.

When ships approached Nova Scotia’s rugged coastline and experienced the unpredictable winds, fog and snow, “they quite often paid a price with their ships. Nova Scotia has some of the most unpredictable weather in the North Atlantic.”

Dwyer’s all-time favourite dive site for virgin wrecks is St. Paul Island, off the northeast tip of Cape Breton in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. “There are over 350 ships wrecked on that one rock and there’s 100-foot visibility in all directions. It’s unexplored, very remote and very hostile.”

His second favourite area is the eastern shoreline of Nova Scotia, where he is currently exploring the hundreds of lost shipwrecks.

His initial book, Wreck Hunter – The Quest for Lost Shipwrecks, published in 2004, went to a second printing in 2008. It will be followed up by a new book called Wreck Hunter – Shipwreck Hunting 101, which is due out this year.

Terry has also worked in the movie industry, providing diving support services and safety divers in situations where actors are in or near the water. The films he has worked on include James Cameron’s Titanic, as well as K-19: The Widowmaker, the story of the former Soviet Union’s first nuclear ballistic submarine that had a malfunction in its nuclear reactor on its maiden North Atlantic trip.

His next big project is a “shipwreck-hunting school” in Nova Scotia, which will teach divers how to search for virgin wrecks, including the use of today’s high-tech equipment. This includes side-scan sonar, which maps the ocean floor, and a marine magnetometer, a device that measures the earth’s magnetic field. It detects metal man-made objects.

Operating out of an area that is remote and virtually unexplored, the courses will offer divers first-hand experience in locating shipwrecks. There will also be other courses offered to train divers on the use of other specialized equipment, including underwater camera systems, underwater metal detectors and Remote Operated Vehicles. In all there will be nine different training modules to choose from that will soon be posted on his website, www.wreckhunter.ca

Dwyer says training of this nature is offered nowhere else in the world. “Right now, the biggest interest is from the UK and the United States.” He has already booked his first group of shipwreck enthusiasts from the USA.

The groups will range in size from four to 10 divers, who will be “serious shipwreck people.” Dwyer says any Advanced Open-Water recreational divers can participate. “It provides a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

People can sign up for private, semi-private and group training. Costs vary greatly from about $1,000 for a person who is part of a group up to $5,000 for private or semi-private instruction or a full one-week expedition experience. The courses and expeditions involve 40 hours in a classroom and 16 to 24 hours or 40 hours on a dive boat prowling the mysterious and rugged coastline of Nova Scotia.

Dwyer says his instructors work on a part-time basis for him and range from divers who work full-time in the scuba industry, to current military instructors and people who are professional geophysical equipment operators.

Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com

Reliving Sea Hunt with vintage diving gear

For Bryan Pennington, scuba diving with vintage gear wraps up childhood memories, history, freedom, ease of movement and simplicity, all in one package.

“For many of us who grew up watching Jacques Cousteau and Sea Hunt it was the gear our heroes used so that's what we wanted,” says Bryan, whose business, Vintage Double Hose, in Wesley Chapel, Florida, serves vintage diving enthusiasts. “Diving with vintage gear is driven by your skills, not your equipment. It's very liberating and gives you time to focus on what's around you, as opposed to what's strapped to you.”

He underlines freedom associated with vintage gear this way: “Think about the times you dive in just a shorty or a swimsuit and then you put on a seven-ml with a hood. Now, imagine going without the cumbersome BCD.”

Bryan says if a diver has good water skills and a great grasp on buoyancy and how to achieve it, he or she is ready to go. “The equipment is far simpler to operate and understand than a lot of modern equipment. You are diving for the sake of diving, not for that sake of using all the latest and greatest stuff you can strap to yourself. “

He got into vintage gear because a two-hose was given to him as a child and that was his first dive experience. “One day, I wanted to dive again with one and found out there were no parts.”

The only vintage-gear parts were left-over originals. “I set out to change that and have reproduced almost 100 per cent of the parts you would need to rebuild, service or restore your U.S. Divers or Voit double-hose regulator. I have specialty companies that reproduce all my parts.”

For the most part, says Bryan, Voit regulators are the same as those of U.S. Divers, with some cosmetic differences. “Voit regulators were used by Mike Nelson (the role played by Lloyd Brydges in Sea Hunt) and are very desirable to the collectors out there.

Interest for vintage dive gear has evolved to the point that the National Association of Vintage Equipment Divers (NAVED) has members around the world.

That has spawned business for the parts he produces as well as for his repair work. “I also buy and restore regulators so people who are interested can buy one right from my store and go diving. We also have a tremendous ‘do-it-yourself part of the community and my website hosts all the manuals and technical information you need to service one yourself.”

Bryan dives only with vintage gear. For operations that require a BCD, safe second-stage and pressure gauges, the vintage enthusiasts as a group have built gear that meets the criteria but keeps with the vintage equipment configuration. “I am currently working with a few vintage equipment divers who are also skilled draftsmen and design engineers to introduce a 100-percent brand new double hose regulator with some modern features that will appeal to a whole new group.”

Some of the vintage-gear enthusiasts remain hard-core Sea Hunt fans. For instance, Alec Peirce from Scuba 2000 in Toronto http://www.scuba2000.com/, is the foremost authority on Sea Hunt and has the largest collection of the show’s memorabilia in the world.

“He was a great resource and helped me when I was getting started,” says Bryan. “There was a large celebration at Silver Springs, Florida, in 2011 where many of the Sea Hunt episodes were filmed as a 50th anniversary celebration. For two days the group dove in Sea Hunt-period correct gear, thrilling the passengers on the glass bottom boats with re-created knife fights with the bad guys, underwater torches and attacks by sea creatures.

“Another person is Phil Nuytten of Nuytco Research http://www.nuytco.com/ and Diver Magazine http://www.divermag.com/ in Canada. Phil is an expert on the early days of the Aqua-Lung who also has a vast collection. Without his help and continued support I doubt I'd be here doing this today.”

Diving with vintage gear is also less intrusive to fish. Jonathan Bird of Jonathan Bird’s Blue World TV show...http://www.blueworldtv.com/ has two double-hose regulators Bryan built specifically for him. He uses them during much of the filming of his show because the exhaust bubbles go behind the diver’s head and the fish scare less easily. “He is also using one of our latest designed plate and wings specifically used with double hose regulators.”

Vintage Double Hose

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Return to Antikythera: Divers revisit wreck where ancient computer found

Thanks to:
Jo Marchant is the author of a book about the mechanism, Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer

In 1900, Greek sponge divers stumbled across "a pile of dead, naked women" on the seabed near the tiny island of Antikythera. It turned out the figures were not corpses but bronze and marble statues, part of a cargo of stolen Greek treasure that was lost when the Roman ship carrying them sank two thousand years ago on the island's treacherous rocks.

It was the first marine wreck to be studied by archaeologists, and yielded the greatest haul of ancient treasure that had ever been found. Yet the salvage project – carried out in treacherous conditions with desperately crude equipment – was never completed. So this month, armed with the latest diving technology, scientists are going back.

Antikythera Mechanism

Between 1900 and 1901, the sponge divers retrieved a string of stunning antiquities, including weapons, jewellery, furniture and some exquisite statues. But their most famous find was a battered lump that sat unnoticed for months in the courtyard of Athens' National Archaeological Museum, before it cracked open to reveal a bundle of cogwheels, dials and inscriptions.

It has taken scientists over a hundred years to decode the inner workings of those corroded fragments, with x-ray and CT scans finally revealing a sophisticated clockwork machine used to calculate the workings of the heavens.

Dubbed the Antikythera mechanism, it had pointers that displayed the positions of the sun, moon and planets in the sky, as well as a star calendar, eclipse prediction dial and a timetable of athletics events including the Olympics.

It's a stunning piece of technology that revolutionises our understanding of the abilities of the ancient Greeks. Nothing close to its complexity is known to have been created for well over a thousand years afterwards, and the emergence of mechanical clocks in medieval Europe.

There are questions that remain unanswered, such as where it's from and who built it (Posidonius, a philosopher who lived on Rhodes during the first century BC, is one candidate, while the third century BC genius Archimedes may have invented this type of device). But one of the most intriguing mysteries relates to the wreck on which it was found. What's still down there?
The wreck lies in around 60 metres of cold, rocky, current-swirled water – not an easy place to visit. The sponge divers who salvaged its cargo worked in clunky metal diving suits with little understanding of the dangers of diving at such depth. By the time they abandoned their project, two of them had been paralysed by the bends, and one was dead. They left behind stories of abandoned treasures, including giant marble statues that rolled down the steep slope from the wreck and out of reach.

The undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau spent a couple of days at the wreck site in 1978 and brought up some precious smaller items, including some coins from the Asia Minor coast, which suggested that the ship sailed from there around 70-60 BC (probably carrying war booty from Greek colonies back to Rome). But even with their sleek scuba gear, Cousteau's divers could spend only brief minutes on the seabed without risking the bends.

No one has been back since. Now, after years of negotiations with the Greek authorities, Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist based at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, finally has permission to dive at Antikythera. He's working with Greek archaeologists including Theotokis Theodoulou of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities.

This week, the team begins a three-week survey using rebreather technology, which recycles unused oxygen from each breath and allows divers to stay deeper for longer. The aim is to survey the wreck site properly for the first time, to find out once and for all what has been left down there – and to check down the slope, to 70 metres depth or more, to see if those stories of runaway statues are true.
Any items found on the wreck site could provide further clues to the origin or ownership of the ship. And not all of the pieces of the Antikythera mechanism were ever found. It's a long shot, but those missing bits could still be on the seabed.

This isn't what gets Foley most excited about the project, however. His team will also dive around the entire island, a distance of about 17 nautical miles, using James Bond-style propellers to cover ground quickly. Foley hopes this could reveal a whole clutch of previously unknown wrecks.
The island of Antikythera sits in the middle of what has been a busy trade route since ancient times: a treacherous shard of rock notorious for downing ships in a storm. In Roman times, it was also an infamous centre for pirates. So it's a good bet that there are plenty of other wrecks here, from all periods of history.

On a two-day reconnaissance survey in June this year, Foley and his team discovered the wreck of a British warship called HMS Nautilus, lost in 1807, plus a range of ancient anchors, ceramics and a 19th-century naval gun.

This suggests the area hasn't been looted (which makes sense given the difficulty of diving here), so any new wrecks found could be pristine. "Everyone is very, very excited," Foley says of the upcoming mission. "This ought to be extraordinary."

He also points out that the Antikythera ship, with its valuable cargo, is unlikely to have been travelling alone. When it sank, others in its fleet may have gone down too. Could one of them have been carrying another Antikythera mechanism? For the past hundred years, this awe-inspiring device has stood alone, our only glimpse into a technology lost for millennia. That might – just might – now change.

Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com

Fun Facts About Scuba

Image via Wikipedia

SCUBA diving is a fast-growing, recreational sport that can generally be enjoyed by anyone over 12. Thanks to the world-famous explorer, oceanographer and inventor, Jacques Cousteau, we can easily explore the incredible undersea world. Scuba diving is now a multi-billion dollar recreational family activity, and is continuing to increase in popularity at an exponential rate.

About 70% of the Earth is covered with water, and 97% of that water is salt water – the oceans and seas.

In the early 1700’s, diving bells and large, bulky, sealed suits were developed which used air pumped from the surface to allow divers to spend a limited amount of time under the surface at a limited depth. In the 1940’s, Jacques Cousteau developed the Aqua Lung which allowed for a controlled flow of air under the water from pressurized air tanks.


New scuba divers often find it gross that spitting into your mask is the accepted way of stopping it fogging up at depth. You can buy inexpensive de-fogging solutions which professionals often refer to as spit-in-a-bottle.

Objects appear significantly larger underwater – so yes, you do look fat in that wetsuit.

Sharks don't like the taste of rubber, so always wear a wetsuit. Most sharks are more scared of you than you are of them, so don't panic if you see one. Sharks don't fill out questionnaires on their tastes and fears so both of the above facts could be wrong – proceed with caution!

Scuba diver Michael Proudfoot was diving in a wreck in Baja California, Mexico in 1991, when he accidentally smashed his regulator and lost all his air. He survived for two days in a bubble of air trapped in the ship's galley. There was even a tea urn full of fresh water for him to drink (but no tea). He snacked on sea urchins while waiting to be rescued.

A dance class of 74 scuba divers created a world record on October 27, 2006 at Olympic Park Aquatic Centre in Sydney Australia by dancing simultaneously for ten minutes. No one is yet sure why.

You can use your scuba diving qualifications as college credit for some courses. Who says college has to be hard work? (You'll need an official transcript from the organization that trained you – contact them to find out more.)

Ron Taylor invented a chain mail suit of armour to protect from shark bites and then tried to find out if it worked by letting a shark bite him. It worked, but was too heavy. Perhaps he should have worked out the heavy part first!

Whale sharks have a scary name and are the biggest fish in the ocean, but apparently they're scared of scuba bubbles (at least that's the explanation that locals in Exmouth, Western Australia offered as to why they seem happy to swim
with snorkelers but are wary of scuba divers).

Coral is a living organism which means that Australia's Great Barrier Reef
is arguably the largest living thing on earth.

Australian divers Ron and Valerie Taylor love to swim with Great White sharks, and were the first people to swim with the sharks without a cage and not be eaten.

Underwater weddings are offered by many companies around the world. The couples and guests can wear traditional wedding attire or wet suits. Vows are written on a dive slate, and the vows are 'said' by pointing at the words on the slate.

There are some 5,300 PADI (Professional Association of Dive Instructors) Dive centres operating in 180 countries, and NAUI (National Association of Underwater Instructors) claims to have tens of thousands of affiliated members, stores and service centres around the world.


If you dive with a cold or sinus problems it may be painful. More importantly, if you sneeze into your mask at depth the gross factor of having to spit in it will pale into insignificance.

Richard Presley spent 69 days and 19 minutes in an underwater module in a lagoon off Key Largo, Florida, in 1992, setting the record for the longest deep dive. His endurance test was carried out as part of Project Atlantis, which aimed to explore human tolerance to life in an underwater environment.

Have you ever seen those beetles that skate around in circles on top of the water in ponds and lakes? If you watch them long enough, you may see them dive under the water. When they do this, they take a bubble of air with them that gets trapped between their body and wing covers. They breathe this air while underwater, then come to the surface again when they need more.

The deepest dive using scuba gear is held by Jim Bowden of the United States. In 1994 he dived to a depth of 1,000 feet in the freshwater Zacatoa Cave in Mexico.

The most valuable shipwreck was discovered by the late Mel Fisher, a famous 20th-century treasure hunter. In 1985, Mel found the Nuestra Senora de Atocha off the Key West coast of Florida. The ship carried 36 tons of gold and silver, and 70 lbs. of emeralds when it went down in a hurricane in September of 1622.

Freedivers (those holding their breath) in Japan and Korea today still dive for oysters, edible shellfish and seaweed. Except for the lead weights carried on their belts and their glass face masks, these divers work in the same manner as did their ancestors thousands of years ago. Most of these modern divers are women. They can stay underwater longer and are better able to withstand the cold than can men. Divers of the Japanese Ama culture can spend four or five minutes underwater, and have been known to reach depths of 150 feet.

And last but not least-----You will never look graceful walking on land wearing a pair of fins – especially if you're also wearing full scuba gear!!!!

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

The last of the Sea Nomads

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