9NEWS.com | Denver | Colorado's Online News Leader | Divers head almost 200 feet under water for Cheesman Reservoir repairs

9NEWS.com Denver Colorado's Online News Leader Divers head almost 200 feet under water for Cheesman Reservoir repairs

Video Click Here

CHEESMAN RESERVOIR - Wanted: Deep-water diver who is not claustrophobic, has zero problems with isolation, works well under pressure and isn't ashamed to talk like Daffy Duck.

Cowards need not apply.

 

John Ventress has never authored a want ad, but if he had to his first one would probably look a lot like that. Such is life for the man who's heading up a multi-million dollar repair project currently taking place inside Cheesman Reservoir.

"This is a mindset. It's not for everybody," says Ventress who works for Seattle-based Global Diving and Salvage. "You have to be able to deal with things and not let things bother you."

Since August, divers with Global Diving have been working on repairing and replacing the dam's century-plus old valves at depths that sometimes take the divers nearly 200 feet below the surface of the reservoir.

"When they built the dam 110 years ago," says Ventress, "the valves were built into the dam, so they just can't shut off the upstream side of the tunnel."

The new repairs should be done by the middle part of November.

"This dam was quite the feat of engineering for the turn of the century," says Denver Water's Brian Daniels.

But time has caught up to the old dam, he says, and Global Diving offered up the best possible solution. It's a solution that has divers in the water 20 hours out of every day.

"I'm a certified rescue diver, but this is just a different deal," says Daniels.

For 28 days straight, four divers live inside of a highly-pressurized and rather small tube that rests on the top of a barge that floats on top of Cheesman Reservoir. Working in two-person teams, the divers spend about 10 hours a day in the water working on repairs.

When we went out to visit with them, the divers were working at a depth of 195 feet. The pressure down there is roughly the equivalent of nearly 6 atmospheres.

At that depth, the divers must breathe in mostly helium. The air we breathe in is mostly nitrogen, but at that depth, the pressurized nitrogen would lead to nitrogen narcosis. In that kind of environment, divers would be working on a "fuzzy" mind.

"Helium is an inert gas, so it doesn't affect us, where with nitrogen at depth you get a narcotic effect," says Ventress.

The 28 day shifts enable them to limit the number of times the divers must have to go through decompression, time that is considered "wasted time" for skilled divers. Even still, divers working at depths of close to 200 feet have to decompress for approximately 66 hours before they can safely breathe air at the surface.

"You have got to have your mind in the right spot," says a smiling Jimmy Giessler, a diver for Global Diving. "This is enough to drive anyone bonkers in here."

Global Diving has worked on projects from the Gulf of Mexico to the waters off of Alaska. The repairs at Cheesman represent phase one of a two-phase project that should be completed by the middle part of next year.

 

(KUSA-TV © 2010 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)

CPR switch: Chest presses first, then give breaths - Health - Heart health - msnbc.com

Geoff Rose shared this page that I thought would be helpful. Thanks Goeff

CPR switch: Chest presses first, then give breaths - Health - Heart health - msnbc.com

Haraz N. Ghanbari  /  AP file

Under the revised guidelines, rescuers using traditional CPR should start chest compressions immediately — 30 chest presses, then two breaths.

By JAMIE STENGLE

The Associated Press

updated 10/18/2010 12:30:22 AM ET 2010-10-18T04:30:22

DALLAS — New guidelines out Monday switch up the steps for CPR, telling rescuers to start with hard, fast chest presses before giving mouth-to-mouth.

The change puts "the simplest step first" for traditional CPR, said Dr. Michael Sayre, co-author of the guidelines issued by the American Heart Association.

In recent years, CPR guidance has been revised to put more emphasis on chest pushes for sudden cardiac arrest. In 2008, the heart group said untrained bystanders or those unwilling to do rescue breaths could do hands-only CPR until paramedics arrive or a defibrillator is used to restore a normal heart beat.

Now, the group says everyone from professionals to bystanders who use standard CPR should begin with chest compressions instead of opening the victim's airway and breathing into their mouth first.

The change ditches the old ABC training — airway-breathing-compressions. That called for rescuers to give two breaths first, then alternate with 30 presses.

Sayre said that approach took time and delayed chest presses, which keep the blood circulating.

"When the rescuer pushes hard and fast on the victim's chest, they're really acting like an artificial heart. That blood carries oxygen that helps keep the organs alive till help arrives," said Sayre, an emergency doctor at Ohio State University Medical Center.

"Put one hand on top of the other and push really hard," he said.

Sudden cardiac arrest — when the heart suddenly stops beating — can occur after a heart attack or as a result of electrocution or near-drowning. The person collapses, stops breathing normally and is unresponsive. Survival rates from cardiac arrest outside the hospital vary across the country — from 3 percent to 15 percent, according to Sayre.

Under the revised guidelines, rescuers using traditional CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, should start chest compressions immediately — 30 chest presses, then two breaths. The change applies to adults and children, but not newborns.

One CPR researcher, though, expressed disappointment with the new guidelines. Dr. Gordon Ewy of the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center thinks everyone should be doing hands-only CPR for sudden cardiac arrest, and skipping mouth-to-mouth. He said the guidelines could note the cases where breaths should still be given, like near-drownings and drug overdoses, when breathing problems likely led to the cardiac arrest.

Ewy is one of the authors of a recently published U.S. study that showed more people survived cardiac arrest when a bystander gave them hands-only CPR, compared to CPR with breaths.

The guidelines issued Monday also say that rescuers should be pushing deeper, at least 2 inches in adults. Rescuers should pump the chest of the victim at a rate of at least 100 compressions a minute — some say a good guide is the beat of the old disco song "Stayin' Alive."

Dr. Ahamed Idris, of the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, said people are sometimes afraid that they'll hurt the patient. Others have a hard time judging how hard they are pressing, he said.

"We want to make sure people understand they're not going to hurt the person they're doing CPR on by pressing as hard as they can," he said.

Idris, who directs the Dallas-Fort Worth Center for Resuscitation Research, said that for the last two years, they've been advising local paramedics to start with chest compressions and keep them up with minimal interruptions. That, along with intensive training, has helped improve survival rates, he said.

He said they found paramedics hadn't been starting compressions until the patient was in the ambulance and lost time getting airway equipment together.

"The best chance was to start chest compressions in the house, immediately," he said.

Race to the Bottom: organizers hope underwater scooter racing is the next sky surfing - Wire - Lifestyle - bellinghamherald.com

Race to the Bottom: organizers hope underwater scooter racing is the next sky surfing - Wire - Lifestyle - bellinghamherald.com

MIAMI At 5-foot-7 and 130 pounds, Michael Vivona has never excelled in sports. But that changed last weekend when the 56-year-old engineering supervisor for an Orlando television station earned a championship in an emerging extreme sport: underwater scooter racing.
Vivona piloted his $7,000 Dive-X Cuda 1150 to victory in a fleet of 15 in the Wes Skiles Memorial Shootout in Key Largo, the third event of the newly formed Wreck Racing League's Formula H2O circuit. The race was held 45 feet deep on the wreck of the Benwood, a 360-foot merchant freighter.
Vivona, a self-described "tech-head" who overcame crippling migraines in both Saturday's practice and Sunday's race, credited his win to his size.

"I'm real small. I'm more streamlined. The whole thing in the water is drag," he said. "There are very few sports that require you to be small. This appears to be one of those - like a jockey racing a horse."
Vivona won a trophy, the checkered flag, a congratulatory underwater kiss from "mermaid" Toni Hyde and a decorative belt handed over by the series' defending champion, David Ulloa. The new champ said he hopes the sport will grow in popularity.
"It's so new. Nothing like this has been attempted before," Vivona said. "We don't know whether it's going to have continued impact. It could go on to be just another fun thing to do with your friends."
Racing underwater scooters, or diver propulsion vehicles (DPVs), is the brainchild of Joe Weatherby, who spearheaded the 2009 sinking of the Vandenberg as an artificial reef off Key West, and Dave Sirak, who works with Vivona at WFTV-Channel 9 in Orlando.
Pondering a way to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the missile tracker's deployment, they planned to race each other around the Vandenberg, but then decided to open the event. A fleet of nine DPVs lined up for the June 13 contest, which was won by Miami's Dean Vitale, inventor of the Pegasus Thruster, a hands-free DPV that attaches to a scuba tank.
Encouraged by the competitors' enthusiasm, the Wreck Racing League took its fledgling Formula H2O circuit to Fort Lauderdale for the Gold Coast Underwater Grand Prix on Aug. 22. A fleet of 24 racers did laps around the sunken freighter Tracey at 70 feet, with Ulloa, an underwater cinematographer from Reddick in Central Florida, taking the trophy.
Known among racers as the "Shark Whisperer," Ulloa is sponsored by Submerge Scooters, which he uses in his job shooting video in water-filled caves. His Magnus 950, which retails for about $6,500, can reach speeds of 300 feet per minute.
"This sport is not cutthroat," he said. "It's camaraderie. It brings people together from all types of diving for a very fun activity."
Following last weekend's Wes Skiles Memorial, dedicated to a pioneering underwater photographer who died in a diving accident in July off Boynton Beach, Weatherby announced tentative plans to hold a fourth race in Key West next month. (Check www.wreckracingleague.com for updates.)
"It's the new X-Games," he said. "We are about alternative power and all things environmental. Everybody's determined to make the league a success."
DPVs are among the most environmentally friendly forms of marine propulsion because they are battery-powered and quiet. Rather than disturbing marine life, one scooter practicing for the Key Largo race piqued the curiosity by a four-foot-long green moray eel that swam out of the Benwood wreck to check it out.
Originally used by scientific, technical and military divers, DPVs now are mainstream - albeit big-ticket - accessories for recreational scuba divers. Priced between $200 and $10,000, about a dozen models are expected to be displayed at the annual Dive Equipment and Marketing Association show in Las Vegas next month.
DEMA executive director Tom Ingram said the dive industry doesn't keep track of DPV sales, but he's glad for any emerging sport that boosts scuba diving's profile.
"People are always looking for ways to compete with each other," Ingram said. "There's not a lot besides breath-hold diving and spearfishing that you can have competition underwater."
Formula H2O racing has provided great fun and stress relief for Nathan Cruz, 37, a retired U.S. Army staff sergeant who lives in Miami.
Cruz survived his Chinook helicopter being shot down in Afghanistan in 2008 only to suffer severe injury days later when his motorcycle was struck by an SUV near Fort Campbell, Ky. Confined to a wheelchair, he underwent months of physical therapy, became a certified scuba diver through the Wounded Warriors program last spring and has scored two third-place finishes in Formula H2O.
"I was born to fly," Cruz said, smiling. "Every time I go diving, I come out and nothing hurts."

Underwater museum makes a splash in Cancun - USATODAY.com

Underwater museum makes a splash in Cancun - USATODAY.com

By Jayne Clark, USA TODAY

CANCUN, Mexico — Strange and wonderful doings are afoot in the offshore waters here, where hundreds of life-size human statues are poised like ghostly apparitions 27 feet beneath the surface. They're the latest addition to a new underwater museum in the National Marine Park of Cancun that in November will host 400 sculptures in an installation called The Silent Evolution. They join several other tableaus — a man standing at a desk, a woman tending pots of coral, a taciturn gent with fire coral sprouting from his head — in the world's largest museum of its kind.

PHOTO GALLERY: An eerie museum under the sea

Call it art with a purpose. The cement sculptures constitute an artificial reef, providing surfaces for new coral growth and a habitat for fish and other sea creatures. It also diverts snorkelers and scuba divers, thereby reducing wear and tear on the natural reefs nearby. Local tour operators ferry visitors to the site for diving, snorkeling or glass-bottom-boat rides.

The man behind the concept is Jason de Caires Taylor, a British sculptor who created a similar, albeit smaller, underwater museum/artificial reef off Grenada in 2006. Officials from Cancun's marine park contacted him about doing a project for them. It's an exhibition that will never get boring, because it's destined to be ever-changing.

"I have a whole team of underwater helpers that come along and do all the finishing for me," Taylor says. "The coral applies the paint. The fish supply the atmosphere. The water provides the mood. People ask me when it's going to be finished. This is just the beginning."

Underwater scooter won't make you look like James Bond | DVICE

Underwater scooter won't make you look like James Bond DVICE

Diving derby in Keys to benefit reef tract | news-press.com | The News-Press

Diving derby in Keys to benefit reef tract news-press.com The News-Press

9:04 A.M. — Scuba divers are invited to help the Keys reef tract by participating in the inaugural Keys Lionfish Derby Series Saturday and Nov. 13.

Divers will compete for cash prizes to see who can catch the most, largest and smallest lionfish, which are aggressive non-native fish that have become the dominant species on some Caribbean and Bahamian reefs and could dominate Keys reefs.

Lionfish were first reported in the Keys in January 2009, and scientists think they could reach Lee County’s artificial reefs and natural ledges if the Keys population is not controlled.

Divers who register today for Saturday’s event, which will be staged out of Keys Fisheries in Marathon, will pay $100 for a team of up to four divers (entry fee includes a pair of puncture-resistant gloves and two banquet tickets).

The fee for teams registering Thursday or Friday is $120.

Registration on or before Nov. 10 for the Nov. 13 event is $100; late registration is $120 — this event will be staged out of Hurricane Hole Marina in Key West.

During the series’ first event, held Sept. 11 out of Key Largo, about 100 divers collected 534 lionfish. The winning team captured 111.

For more information and to register, visit: http://www.reef.org/lionfish/derbies

Haigh Quarry Video - Great Vis

Census of Marine Life

These are some incredible pictures of marine life. I do not thik they were taken at Haigh Quarry.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39473500/from/ET/?beginSlide=2