Diving News

On March 14, 1975, 22-year-old Californian woman Donna Tobias graduated from the US Navy Second Class Dive School to become the first woman deepsea diver in the Navy.Marking the 50th anniversary of women’s integration into the US Navy Diving community, the Association of Women Navy Divers highlights that over 300 women have now graduated from the Navy’s schools.The society recounts that this happened during a period of immense change brought about by the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment through Congress in 1972. Admiral Elmo R.

BY Captain Bobbie Scolley, U.S. Navy (ret.) and Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, U.S. Navy (ret.)For more than six decades, spanning from 1905 to the late 1970s, the U.S. Navy’s diving apparatus for deep ocean operations and salvage remained fundamentally unchanged. During this period, the demographic of navy divers also saw little alteration. However, beginning in the mid-1970s and continuing to the present day, a series of developments initiated a gradual transformation in both areas with significant implications for contemporary Navy diving.Donna Tobias…

Work to recover the late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch's sunken superyacht off the coast of northern Sicily has been paused following the death of a diver involved in the operations, the company leading the effort said on Saturday.The 56-metre-long (184-foot) Bayesian was moored off the small port of Porticello, near Palermo, in August last year when it was likely hit by a downburst, a very strong downward wind, killing seven people, including Lynch and his daughter Hannah."This…

Robotic hull cleaning company Fleet Cleaner has changed its name to Fleet Robotics to reflect its evolution into a global 24/7 one-stop-shop for high quality underwater maintenance and performance optimization.In 2017 Fleet Cleaner became the first company to offer its robotic underwater hull cleaning in Dutch ports, expanding to Belgium shortly after. Since then, Fleet Cleaner has grown into a trusted provider of safe, efficient, and certified underwater cleaning operations, including the world’s only ATEX-certified solution for tanker cleaning during cargo operations.

New in-depth analysis from the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA)’s industry vessel inspection programmes, eCMID and eMISW, reveals ongoing concerns around technical inspections, the controlled entry into confined spaces, cyber security, as well as defects to life-saving appliances.IMCA eCMID System Annual Report 2022/23 analysed the 1,539 reports on vessel inspections undertaken and uploaded to the eCMID database between April 2022 and April 2023, finding common themes of concern.Of the 761 eCMID inspections…

Commercial divers recently helped a tanker return to service after suffering major propeller damage in the Port of Corpus Christi.Phoenix International Holdings, Inc. said its commercial ship husbandry division recently responded to a call from the stricken 330-meter vessel in 60-feet of water in Corpus Christi, Texas.Upon mobilizing a fly away dive spread and dive team, the project manager Errol Gritten performed the complex mathematics involved in calculating the mass loss of the damage to restore hydrodynamic balance.

Divers sealed two tank vents that leaked fuel from a bulk carrier that was damaged and beached after a collision off the British enclave of Gibraltar on the southern tip of Spain, local authorities said on Thursday.The hull of the bulk carrier OS 35 broke after the collision with an LNG tanker and started leaking fuel oil on Wednesday, but the vessel has not broken into two parts."The Captain of the Port confirmed that the leak of low sulphur fuel oil from the tank vents is fully under control," the Gibraltar government said in a statement.The LNG tanker was not significantly affected by the c

Royal IHC announced that on the December 24, 2021, it sold IHC Hytech B.V. (Hytech) to private investors who have established Pommec Hytech Holding B.V. Buyers plan to merge the operations of Hytech with those of Pommec B.V. (Pommec).Hytech specializes in the design and manufacturing of high quality, professional diving and hyperbaric equipment. Hytech designs, produces and delivers innovative, sustainable and integrated equipment for the diving, governmental, tunneling, life support and medical markets. Other than the medical market, Pommec is currently active in all markets that Hytech operates in. Pommec is currently located in Bergen op Zoom.

Divers have discovered rare remains of a military vessel in the ancient sunken city of Thônis-Heracleion - once Egypt's largest port on the Mediterranean - and a funerary complex illustrating the presence of Greek merchants, the country said on Monday. The city, which controlled the entrance to Egypt at the mouth of a western branch of the Nile, dominated the area for centuries before the foundation of Alexandria nearby by Alexander the Great in 331 BC.Destroyed and sunk along with a wide area of the Nile delta by several earthquakes and tidal waves…

German divers searching the Baltic Sea for discarded fishing nets have stumbled upon a rare Enigma cipher machine used by the Nazi military during World War Two which they believe was thrown overboard from a scuttled submarine.Thinking they had discovered a typewriter entangled in a net on the seabed of Gelting Bay, underwater archaeologist Florian Huber quickly realized the historical significance of the find.“I’ve made many exciting and strange discoveries in the past 20 years.

Polish divers say they have found the wreck of a German World War Two ship which may help solve a decades-old mystery - the whereabouts of the Amber Room, an ornate chamber from a tsarist palace in Russia that was looted by the Nazis.Decorated with amber and gold, the Amber Room was part of the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg, but was last seen in Koenigsberg, then a Baltic port city in Germany but now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.It was from Koenigsberg that the Karlsruhe steamer set sail in 1945 with a heavy cargo…

Subsea Global Solutions (SGS), a commercial diving company, has announced that it has acquired Underwater Contractors Pte. Ltd. (UWC), a prominent commercial diving firm based in Singapore, and Gray Diving Services Pty. Ltd. (GDS), a commercial diving firm based in Sydney, Australia, through separate transactions. With these two tandem acquisitions, SGS expands its global footprint in the Asia-Pacific region beyond Busan, South Korea, where it had a local office for the last 7 years and increases the number of its home ports worldwide to 13.

The provider of  comprehensive services to oil and maritime companies,  Chet Morrison Contractors (Morrison) has acquired two pipelay/construction barges and a saturation diving system from an undisclosed seller in a move to double the size of its pipelay barge fleet.Louisiana based energy services company said in a press release that the first asset it acquired is LB Super Chief, a 265 ft x 72 ft ABS-classed pipelay barge with accommodations for 93 personnel. It is outfitted with a 100 KIP pipe tensioner, is U.S. flagged and provides extended capabilities for pipe size and water depth lay and recovery.It also acquired DLB Subsea Vision, a 415 ft x 100 ft ABS-classed pipelay and construction barge with accommodations for up to 140 personnel.

Divers are one step closer to being able to camp underwater. A pair of innovators have developed an underwater habitat – a subsea ‘basecamp’ if you will – that  provides a portable deep-sea space for divers, a habitat and dedicated life support system that provides creates a breathable environment. Developed by NYU Meyers professor Winslow Burleson and diving pioneer and explorer Michael Lombardi, the system was awarded a patent in December 2018.While advances in technology have enabled divers to explore deeper and stay there longer…