Vickie Jensen - Deep, Dark and Dangerous: British Columbias World-Class Undersea Technology Industry

The Story of British Columbias World-Class Undersea Tech Industry

Vickie Jensen

Copyright 2021 Vickie Jensen

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, .

Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC , V 0 N 2 H 0

www.harbourpublishing.com

Edited by Lynne Van Luven

Indexed by Chandan Singh

Text and dust jacket design by Shed Simas / Ona Design

Printed and bound in Canada

Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Deep, dark and dangerous : the story of British Columbias world-class undersea tech industry / Vickie Jensen.

Names: Jensen, Vickie, 1946- author.

Description: Includes index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021027106 X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210271205 | ISBN 9781550179200 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781550179217 ( EPUB )

Subjects: LCSH : Ocean engineering industryBritish Columbia. | LCSH : Ocean engineeringTechnological innovationsBritish Columbia. | LCSH : SubmersiblesTechnological innovationsBritish Columbia.

Classification: LCC HD 9999. O 343 C 25 2021 | DDC 338.4/7620416209711dc23

When people ask me what Im writing, their eyebrows invariably shoot up when I reply BC s subsea history. Yes, its an unusual subject, especially since I spent my childhood in the cornfields of the US Midwest. But I vividly remember the rare occasions when my father told me about his early Navy days as a helmet diver and how hed almost drowned when his dive attendant hadnt immediately hauled him to the surface after his helmet flooded. Like so many others of my generation, I also was captivated by the early television show Sea Hunt, in which Lloyd Bridges portrayed Mike Nelson, a former US Navy frogman. For me, the underwater world has always been both dangerous and exciting.

As a child, I dreamed of a pair of magic glasses that would let me see underwater. That fantasy was no doubt reinforced the summer I dropped my mothers diamond ring off a lakeside dock. My father shouted for everyone in the water to stay absolutely still, then grabbed a diving mask from a nearby kid, dove down and located the ring. Magic glasses, indeed!

Decades later, having moved to the coast of British Columbia, I landed the dream job of editing Westcoast Mariner magazine. Every month for four years, I went out on different types of coastal workboattugs, charter boats, dredges, Coast Guard launches, pile drivers, pilot boatsin order to write about the vessel, its crew and their jobs. I am pretty sure that I was the only woman whose Dress for Success wardrobe included a pair of gumboots in her bottom desk drawer.

One day, a reader named Harry Bohm contacted me. You write about everything happening on the water. What about covering whats happening underwater? At the time, Harry had traded working on tugs for managing Simon Fraser Universitys Underwater Research Lab. He introduced me to the world of submersibles and unmanned, robotic craft like ROV s (Remotely Operated Vehicles with their long tether) and AUV s (tetherless Autonomous Underwater Vehicles). I also began meeting some of the remarkable folks who were working, inventing and researching underwater. He was rightthere was an entire subsea world to learn and write about!

A year later, Harry was back. OK , now I want you to write the book I wish Id had as a kid. He told me about being fascinated by Jacques Cousteaus subsea habitats and, of course, the TV show Sea Hunt. In secondary school hed built a miniature Cousteau-habitat for his science fair project and actually raised a mouse underwater. Now, he was working on the concept of small hardware-store-technology ROV s that even kids could build and operate. Intrigued, I said, Yes!

A year later, we published Build Your Own Underwater Robot and Other Wet Projects, including a glowing recommendation from adventure-author Clive Cussler for the back cover. The coincidence was that the do-it-yourself underwater robot projects detailed in that book were simply a high-tech version of the magic glasses Id dreamed of as a child.

Several years later, Harry and I teamed up with Dr. Steve Moore, an underwater-robot-building zoologist and professor at California State University Monterey Bay ( CSUMB ). The three of us invested years writing the landmark textbook Underwater Robotics: Science, Design & Fabrication, published by the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center ( MATE ) in Monterey, CA . It provides an important resource for the underwater robots in the classroom movement, which is fostered by MATE s annual student ROV competition. All these opportunities, in combination with hundreds of hours of recent interviews, have shaped my fascination with the subsea world.

From the outset I knew that the title of this book had to be Deep, Dark and Dangerous. Those three words perfectly describe the risk and conditions of underwater work. Daunting as they are, those words never defeated the determination of BC s underwater pioneers. They routinely took on risks of all kinds, testing their bodies, their inventions and their financial resources. They refused to believe something was impossibleit just hadnt been done yet.

Early on, I was amazed to realize that hardly anyone outside the subsea industry knew anything about these risk-takers or their accomplishments. As well, it was little known that, beginning in the mid-1960s, BC s undersea tech industry developed a world-class reputation. That legacy is still acknowledged globally.

British Columbias undersea story presents a vital chapter of largely unrecognized Canadian history. Determined to change that glaring omission, I proposed the idea to Harbour Publishing. Howard White immediately agreed. The result is Deep, Dark and Dangerous: The Story of British Columbias World-class Undersea Tech Industry.

Almost without exception, British Columbias subsea visionaries started off as divers. Early on, they gravitated to the water, read Jacques Cousteaus books and watched the TV drama series Sea Hunt, which ran in the late 1950s and early 60s. Most got their scuba certification as soon as they could, often in their mid-teens. Many then graduated to the heavy helmets and suits of commercial diving, a work-world where quirky weather, brutal conditions and rigid timelines were the norm. They learned by testing themselves and their equipment in the water. Often working far from the availability of supplies or spare parts, they made do, took chances, and innovated on the fly. The wisdom they gained led to pragmatic revisions, ideas for future inventions and a critical awareness of the employers requirements.