DVD Review : Pantalleria 2005

About the DVD (from the manufacturer)

In May 2005 a team of 10 scuba divers from the Global Underwater Explorers began a project designed to carve out a model of the archaeological site  from a detailed survey off point Tracino on the Pantelleria island. Many amporae dated back 200 BC are brought to evidence and for the first time are documented resting on the sea bed at a depth of over 80 meters.

Pricing and Purchase Locations

• UK - DirDirect - £18
• US - Extreme Exposure - $17.95

Content Summary

There are the following chapters on this DVD:

1. Documentary in Italian
2. Documentary in English
3. Photo Gallery
4. Bonus Material

Starting the DVD I get a quality impression, there is only one menu to allow you to select which chapter you wish to watch. I think the menu looks very nice, the imagery in the background is beautiful, the audio is nice and crisp and the menu is exceptionally easy to read and navigate.

DVD Menu (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD).

This review has been based upon watching the DVD in English.

Core Material - Summary

The DVD starts with a short introduction and history to the island of Pantalleria and the wreck that they will be diving in the Mediterranean. I really liked this short history, some documentaries that I've seen jump straight in without the "history lesson" at just 1.5 minutes long it was light and concise but to the point.

Short history on the wreck (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD).

Skipping forward to the present (2005) day, the narrator explains that the local authorities wanted to explore the wreck and understand the history more , this is where the GUE team came in. Video starts with some gentle rock music showing the dive teams getting prepared, setting up equipment and some fun video of divers on scooters. During this "start-up" phase of the video, I found that the clips were short, just a few seconds each which allowed you to grasp the point of what you were viewing but not truly understand it.

Just as an example, a short clip shows a truck parking up with the dive and mixing cylinders - if it had been a slower clip and also a bit longer, it would have helped the viewer grasp the magnitude of the diving to come:

Truck load of cylinders (from Pantalleria 2005 DVD).

The rock music ends once you start seeing divers enter the water and start to descend, a calm, sedate music now starts with underwater video. The first diving you see is the divers on an equipment check and site orientation dive.

Day 2 : Checkout dive (from Pantalleria 2005 DVD).

On this DVD, the scenes transition seamlessly from each day of diving to the next. Whilst this makes good for lots of uninterrupted underwater footage. I would have liked to hear some of the surface discussions to add a more personal side.

Day 3 : Orientation dive (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD).

Whilst writing this review, I am trying to wear two hats, firstly commenting on the footage as a diver, but also trying to critique the video as well - I do hope to one day be making documentaries of my own! During Day 3 diving, the narrator does explain how after the orientation dive the process of tagging and surveying begins - this aspect of the diving helped to bring to the audience's knowledge the magnitude of task.

For every artifact found, it is given a unique tag so that it can be surveyed along with the entire wreck.

Survey tags (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD)

It was interesting to learn that the GUE exploration team laid line from the entrance of the sea to the wreck in two routes. This meant that the team could simply scooter to and from the wreck as opposed to being dropped in by boat. This simple idea meant that the teams got more in-water time. These also helped form parts of the survey too.

Day 4 - Scoping the wreck (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD)

Amazingly, the wreck covered a massive 1500 m2 after laying the line which took the entire dive team a shift-pattern to cover.

Day 4 - Scoping the wreck (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD)

The videography of this DVD is great - I really enjoyed how they didn't focus purely on the wreck, there are some great scenes of the fauna and footage of the beautiful fish in the area too.

Underwater life at 90m (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD).

The interest in the expedition by the authorities is not to be underestimated, as part of the dive, the team were asked to recover a sample, not something I would normally expect on a historic wreck.

The story returns to the underwater world and even more beautiful footage is shown. The diving on the wreck is coming to a close, the objectives of the dives are now to survey the artifacts identified. I must admit, at this point I felt an admiration of the exploration divers, not only because they are competently doing 90m survey dives, but watching some of the rebreather divers hovering absolutely motionless while surveying, fins not sculling at all. That level of in-water comfort is everything a diver strives for. I must admit that I personally only feel that level of comfort after doing a solid weeks' diving when on holiday!

Day 8 - survey artefacts (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD).

As part of the survey and documentation of the site, the exploration team produced a relief map showing the contours and location of the site. This will help the local authorities to maintain and protect the site.

Survey of the Pantelleria wreck site (from Pantelleria 2005 DVD).

The narrator concludes the documentary and highlights how the work at the Pantelleria wreck site is far from over and there is in fact an area of the site that highlighted that there may be many other relics to discover. There is also the middle section of the wreck and the hull, which assuming they still exist are still to be found.

Conclusion

The videography that went into this short documentary is quite literally stunning. It was incredible, there was a scene where a rebreather diver was launching their bottom stages to the surface via SMB.  Whilst you could tell that they were more than just 10m from the surface, the water was so clear it looked more like a 40m dive!

I think the actual production of the documentary is excellent, I highlighted earlier that I felt some scenes were far too quick and didn't allow the observer to truly grasp what they were looking at. But that is a minor point, the quality is brilliant, although there are a few spelling mistakes on the packaging and as part of the captions in the documentary - I'm still happy to overlook these. Its only because I've watched the DVD about 5 times writing this review I spotted them.

Overall I'm extremely impressed with this documentary, my only issue is the price. At £18 for just 12 minutes of actual documentary I find that quite steep. Whilst I appreciate that its supporting GUE initiatives and I'm an avid supporter, I feel that might have pushed the price too far. I would have felt better paying about £12. Paying £9.99 I think would represent very good value for money.

There is also some bonus footage showing divers surveying the wreck and also a short photo reel which is just as beautiful.

Price aside, I do recommend it and is worth a watch.

My Line Knotting Machine (mk 1)

Introduction

Ever since I did my PADI Cavern course in Florida way back in 2007, cave diving as entranced me. There were a couple things that really hooked me about it :

1. The exploration – I’m going somewhere that only SCUBA divers can go, and even then about 0.01% of the diving population can do it successfully and safely (for once I’m glad to be a statistic). The idea that I could be travelling and seeing things that no one has seen is fascinating
2. Because of this, just the thrill of swimming along and seeing your torch light disappear ahead of you is exciting.
3. Ironically, hitting your turn pressure and looking down the passage way one last time to see the passage bend and travel beyond your light makes  you think “I wonder what’s down there…”

Once I got into cave diving, I then started hearing about WKPP. Watching some of the documentaries shows how incredible the diving is that they are doing. But one thing that really caught my imagination is the surveying of caves to model where they are going. And as such its something I want to get formal training in, but , this is where this article kicks in, one of the main tools that you need for cave survey is a knotted line.

Knotting

Knotting line is actually a bit of an art, certainly not one I've perfected, but I have found some bad ways thats for sure! I’d tried in the past pulling the line of my reel and using a tape measure but that lead to a very slow process and actually wasn't that accurate. I came across a video on YouTube by Steve Bogaerts who showed his basic rig for knotting vast amounts of line very quickly.

Steve Bogaerts Line Knotting

All credit must go to Steve for my MK1 line knotting machine for its design.

Chris’s Line Knotting Machine

One thing I wanted to do differently to Steve was to knot my line every metre, whereas he was knotting every 10’, approximately 3.3m. The first important design parameter is that rather than knot his line at 10’ intervals, he actually knotted at 9’8’’ to account for tension and line stretching. This is about 3.4%. So whereas I want to knot at 1.0m intervals, I will actually be putting in a knot at about 96cm.

Making the line knotting machine

The line knotting machine is extremely simple, the main body is just a length of wood. The length of this needs to be at least two-thirds, ideally three-quarters of the spacing of your line knots. For me, my knots are at 1M (effective) intervals, so my piece of wood needs to be about 66-75cm long.
Bill of materials:

• 1 piece of wood (length described above)
• 2 off eyelets
• 1 off spike/carriage bolt
• Spool of line

All you need to get knotting!

 Step 1 - Insert spike

At one end, drill a hole for your spike or carriage bolt, then screw the spike/carriage bolt in place. This will hold the bobbin in place when you come to making your knotted line.

Pre-drill then screw in your carriage bolt/spike.

Step 2 - Mark far eyelet

At the opposite end you will need to insert one of your eyelets. Measure a point about 1cm back from the end of the wood so to prevent splitting when you insert your eyelet. Mark the point with a biro pen.

Step 3- Identify knotting point

Next has a bit of maths... So I'll do it step by step.

1. Decide on your distance interval between knots.
2. Take off 3.4%
3. Divide it by two.

In my case I wanted 1 metre between knots so following the steps above for me is :

1. Interval = 100cm
2. Remainder = 96.4cm
3. Half = 48.2cm

This is the distance from your first mark going towards your spike. Measure this point out and mark it on the wood with a biro. You should make this mark as heavy as you can as you want this to be permenant.

Measure the distance carefully.

Step 4- Pre-drill holes

Pre-drill and insert your eyelets at the first point you marked. You will want a second eyelet about 1-2 inches away from the heavy line you marked.

Eyelets inserted.

JOB DONE!

Using the knotting machine

To use the knotting machine, you need to unwrap your spool and make a loop - this will be the start of your line when you are pulling it off your reel. You then want to thread it up through the first eyelet (the eyelet in the middle in the image above) through the far second eyelet (in eyelet on the right in the image above) and then back through the first eyelet (the eyelet in the middle in the image above).

With the loop and knot in your right hand hold it on the line you have marked, then put a gentle bit of tension on the line with your left hand. Pinch this point with your left hand - this is where you will knot the line with a simple overhand knot.

Pull the line through so that the knot you just made is now on the marked line, repeat the process for more knots.

I've tried to explain this a bit better with my sketch below:

Running line through the knotting machine.

 Conclusion

That sums up my implementation of a line knotting machine as per Steve Bogaerts. Hopefully you will find that helpful for making your own if you are interested in cave/wreck survey and in need of knotted lines as part of your diving.

Dive Report : Um El Faroud

The Dive Teams

Steve, Topper and Jack were doing a simulated 60m deco dive, i.e. the deco profile for 25 minutes at 60m. In my team there was Lee, Alia, Yves and myself.

Steve, Topper and Jack would be doing their own dive to pass the deco time.

Dive Commentary

Once in the water I did my bubble check with Lee. When we bubble check each other we are looking for bubbles coming from anywhere they shouldn't be. It takes someone else to check your manifold but we can check our own stages (although if you have three or more its nice to just let someone else rummage through your gear and let them check it for you! Not that I've had someone do that for me because I couldn't be bothered ....).

I spotted bubbles from Yves left post and tried to fix it. I shut the post down and tried to purge the back up reg but the gas never stopped, so I concluded he had some different regulator configuration and not wanting to risk shutting the post he's breathing I left it be. The bubbles were tiny and he felt OK to continue.

Steve and crew headed along the bottom to get the deco racking up whilst we swam at about 15m out to the wreck. Including the faffing with Yves's post it took us 15 minutes to hit the wreck - a moderate current was running.

Alia at 15m with the rebreather and trimix team below.

 Arriving on the stern, Lee lead us along the port deck passage. At this point, Lee was leading, I was second, Alia third and Yves at the back in four. Swimming forward we passed an entrance into a cabin that lead to the engine room on our right.

Swimming along the port deck.

Arriving in front of the super structure we met with Steve and co. Jack led the way heading downwards and towards the forward tanker section of the ship.

Jumping the void to the forward section.

Dropping down to the bottom of the cargo bays we passed through the bulkhead through a compartment door.

Passing through the compartment bulkhead

Now in one of the huge compartments you can either keep going through another bulkhead into a compartment that is completely closed in (Lee and I went in here on our check out dive on day 1, there are lots of holes that a sidemount diver could get into however) or head up through a crack in the decking which is what we did.

Inside the first compartment

"Surfacing" on the deck we then turned around to head back to the stern. I personally would have been happy to spend the entire dive in the engine room, but it was a good call to go see a bit of the ship. So now we were heading back to the engine room for a nosey.

Jumping the gap and heading aft

Returning to the superstructure you need to pass over some pipework, perhaps this was a fuel or liquid carrying vessel? Yves led into the engine room, I was second, Alia was third and Lee took the rear at 4.

Just entered the engine room.

From this entry, there is a gap as soon as you enter to drop straight down a level, but we continued in at this level at a depth of about 25m. Approximately half way back the engine room opens up into a wider space where you can drop down a level more easily. In the picture below, you can see to the left of the image, the starboard entry point and at the back is the funnel for the exhaust.

Yves descending into the engine room.

Mid-engine upwards steps and port exit.

Dropping down into the next level down, Yves is waiting for us to catch up. This is now the middle level. There is a deck running around the perimeter of the engine room with rooms shooting off. I've not explored any of these. I dropped down and moved to one side and used the railing as my reference while I got set. Using the GoPro was a challenge I found, its extremely small so I was paranoid of dropping it!

Looking back to make sure Alia and Lee were following us and all is OK - I can see their torches. I look back and indicate to Yves to continue penetrating. He drops to the third and lowest level and continues aft.

Yves on Engine Room Level 3

Following carefully and getting neutrally buoyant (there is a very thick layer of rust in here - a silt out could be easily done), I quickly checked my bottom timer to see that we are at 32m in here. All the gauges and machinery is still in here. On my right I see gauges.

Machinery guages.

It is unfortunately a dead end to continue further back. Turning around I am faced with the gigantic engine straight in front of me and I can see the lights of Alia and Lee coming down. So I headed down the starboard side of the engine down a small passage before coming back up to Level 2 where Yves had waited for me.

Yves came up behind me, with Lee and Alia just behind him. Lee led heading further aft at this level towards the exhaust stack. I found a Moray Eel hiding inside a pipe, I tried to point it out to Yves, but it just re-treating in the pipe. Ascending up the exhaust stack takes us up to about 22m.

At 48 minutes, at an average depth of 22m we were just entering deco so we moved to the starboard side of the ship and we met Steve. Steve was trying to advise Lee to keep swimming at the 24m level and not move up to avoid the currents. We left at about 22m towards the reef. I had taken a bearing and fixed my compass on the way out so I could clearly see the return route. The current was mostly head on.

We were gradually ascending as we swam, at about 52 minutes we had reached 21m. Looking back to Yves we switched each other to our 50% deco gas and continued on. I did the maths in my head. I didn't actually believe the 22m average depth my computer was telling me, I thought we had been deeper than that (in the engine room) for longer, so I rounded down my average depth not to 24m, but to 27m which gave me a deco of about 13 minutes which was overly conservative in my mind. But there's no harm in doing too much. Working our way back we are in the bay at about 12m, I ask Yves about deco, he says he has 13 minutes. Crickey! Oh well, 13 minutes left isn't too bad, I was about 6 about this point - I was hoping to be surfacing at about 72 minutes. Yves went off to find sea horses and I had to follow him because he was heading a long way out. He then started heading back because he realised his deco was growing!

At this point my canister light decides to fall off! The halcyon cinch system means that the light isn't on your waist belt its on a shorter seperate peice. I thought I wouldn't ask anyone to help because I didn't want to bother them, so I found a ledge at about 6-7m to rest the canister on, got neutral and just rested. The swells were no where near as bad as the previous trip so whilst I was still going around in circles due to the current, it was manageable.

I was quite content and quite relaxed at this point and then I got my bum molested! Two big hands groping me! Scared the hell out of me and then I thought "Jack!", I grab my canister, roll over and I DON'T see Jack! I see Steve and Topper! So I just gave them a finger in jest.

Asking Yves about deco he has cleared, so I gave him the thumbs up, and got a no. He still had to do his 3 minute safety stop. By this point we are at 82 minutes! Alia and Lee had already got out the water and I was watching Steve, Topper and Jack getting out - no harm in us just waiting about for a bit.

Yves had cleared and out we got. No assistance needed other than Steve taking my cannister light while I climbed out - THIS was what a dive was supposed to be - brilliantly relaxed and a doddle to get in and out of!!

Dive Report : HMS Maori

About the wreck (from Wikipedia):

HMS Maori (L24/F24/G24) was a Tribal-class destroyer laid down by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Limited, at Govan in Scotland on 6 June 1936, launched on 2 September 1937[1] by Mrs W. J. Jordan and commissioned on 2 January 1939. She was named after the indigenous Māori people of New Zealand, and Mrs Jordan was the wife of the New Zealand High Commissioner William Jordan.

Maori served with the Mediterranean Fleet, was involved in the pursuit and destruction of the enemy Bismarck in May 1941,[2] and served with the 14th Destroyer Flotilla during the Battle of Cape Bon in December 1941.[3] Maori, commanded by Commander R. E. Courage, RN, was attacked by enemy German aircraft and sank at her moorings in the Malta Grand Harbour on 12 February 1942 with the loss of one of her crew. She was raised and scuttled off Malta on 15 July 1945.

Location

The Team

 Steve Wilko was our guide for the dive and I was with Yves. Also part of the Divewise team was Oz and Tom and Neil.

Dive Commentary

The entry point that we chose to use was located right at the end of the road and down a short flight of stairs. Unfortunately, in the 3 months it has been since I was last in Malta and diving the Maori the local fishermen have removed the ladders that divers were using to enter a relatively sheltered area to kit up and get comfy before entering "open water" (indicated by route 1). So there are two options left for this entry point. Either, walking down the steps that enter straight into the water which look slightly unnerving to me because they are at least coloured as you would expect a slippery surface although I never saw anyone slip (indicated by route 2). Or secondly a giant stride entry to the right of this area (indicated by route 3 below).


Once we were in the water it was a quick descent although for the first few seconds I though I was under-weighted and couldn't drop down because the water was so turbulent that all I could see were bubbles and silt, but after a few seconds I had dropped below this turbulent layer and dropping down onto the reef at about 4m it took Yves a few more seconds to drop down to join us eventually.

Steve led us along the reef. On the way I decided to try and use the Go Pro that my friend had loaned me back in the UK so clearly the first thing I wanted to do was take a selfie!

Swimming along the reef at about 6m there is a moderate motion to the water so the plant life is swaying and looks beautiful, the plant life has some vibrant colours - even purple as I found here.

As well as the local fauna, there are a lot of fish on the reef. We swam along the reef for longer than necessary compared to taking a direct route but it meant that we hit the bow region. At this point I was number 3 with Steve leading and Yves in the middle.

 Coming around between the forward and rear sections the main body of the wreck is on our left and we can see a large entrance for a swim through along the length of the ship. We had Yves lead, being a photographer we wanted to give him the best vis possible so he lead, I took 2 and Steve took 3. Inside the wreck I tried to take a selfie but I wasn't stable enough with my hands so the pictures are a bit blurred! If you had cataracts and a squint I suppose it might look ok!

We swam aft along the length of the ship with Yves taking pictures as he went. There is a large cylinder  that runs upward - I think this could be part of the funnel perhaps? You can swim around it but it gets tight to the far left so excellent buoyancy control is needed so as to not silt up the area. Just on one of the windows of the wreck was a tubular coral.

Exiting the wreck and dropping down to the deepest point of about 14m there is a large piece of ammunition that can be found here. I was also trying to use my 21W HID light to illuminate the shell a little more and it worked I think.

I'm amazed at how well the picture turned out because whilst I was really concentrating on my buoyancy and getting myself position just right I was truly in my zone. So I'm concentrating, trying to imagine framing the image and if I'm pointing it the right when and started squeezing the button to take the picture when I feel a hand sliding up between my legs!!! Startled and nearly dropping the camera I roll over to see whats going on above and behind me - and I see Neil right there in front of me with Tom and Oz above. I looked back at Neil, and just gave him a middle finger! It was funny but crickey it scared the life out of me! Neil told me that when he saw my eyes wide he thought I was going to hit him!! Ha!

Also around here were a lot of fireworms which required avoiding.

So we swam along the outside of the wreck and then came back about to near the wheel house.

The large cylinder that was seen inside the wreck can also been seen on top. It looks like is has gear teeth along the outside of it. But with the top of it being sealed with just a small hole I'm thinking it could be a boiler. We then approached the wheel house which is very skeletal now.

Leaving the wreck we then came across part of the mid-ship that still remained after the forward section had been recovered. All that remains here are the ribs of the ship with some boarding.

Leaving here we then headed to the reef to start our way back. On the way we found a very large octopus sleeping in a very small hole. One tentacle went across the hole and you could see its body behind that. The thickness of one tentacle was approximately an inch!

I found an interesting underwater creature. It was a Brill fish. It was sheer fluke it was underneath me when I looked down, you could JUST see its outline under a thin layer of sand, despite me disturbing it, it didn't bolt off - Oz later told me that he has often used his hand to guide the fish where he wants - usually in circles!

Swimming closer to the reef  again with Steve leading, Yves second and me third. Steve stops and looks towards the reef. He then looks back to where he was going, he then looks back again. He turns back to us and points - at what? Looking around I couldn't see anything of interest. So we start swimming in a line to the reef. Steve stops and, even to this day this still makes me chuckle, he grabs a handful of sand and then sprinkles it on his head!!! And then points at the reef again. Having just seen the fillet fish I thought he meant that. But swimming steadily onwards I saw nothing out the ordinary. Then all of a sudden, whoosh, what looked like a squid went shooting from the seabed across us. It turned out to be a cuttlefish - I had never seen one before so that was very interesting!

Returning to the entry point we found ourselves inside a washing machine and it was far to risky to get out, we were all in twinsets, Yves had a nice camera and I had my very big, but very delicate dive light. So we chose an extended exit. Further around the bay there is a tunnel that leads to an inland river that the fishermen store their boats in. It took about 8-10 minutes to swim there and then getting through the tunnel was a challenge because the surge meant that you were making about 1 inch of progress a minute, but then all of a sudden, you would get pulled through!

The tunnel and the right hand turn once through the tunnel are very scenic - a good place for a photograph. Swimming the length of river is quite shallow and I did have an embarrassing moment where the tide went out just as I was going over a little rise in the reef/rocks which meant I "beached" myself! I had to wait for the tide to come in again to give me the depth to get over it. The very end of river has a nice gentle slope from the beach up to the main road and then it was a long walk back to the van.

Surface Air Consumption

I am in the habit of calculating my Surface Air Consumption (SAC) rate for every dive. The calculation that I use assumes a square profile which for this dive is very very accurate, for other dives it may not be. You can compensate for that slightly if your computer can track average depth you could use that measurement in the calculation.

I entered the water with a twinset of 12l cylinders with a fill of 190 bar and I came out with 70 bar. So I used 120 bar of gas which is equivalent to 2x12x120 = 2,880 litres of gas. According to my dive computer we hit a maximum depth of 14m. Now I know that was when I was taking the picture of the ammunition, we were at that depth for about 1 minute, the rest of the dive was at an average depth of 11m, so I will use that in my calculation.

So to calculate my SAC rate it is : 2,880 (litres of gas used) / 2.1 (11m in ATA) x 75 (dive duration) = 18 l/min.

For me that is higher than expected. I was expecting something about 15-16 l/min. But thinking about the dive, I was really trying hard to keep neutral and maintain good trim and I was really loading my lungs - what I should have done was to put a bit more gas in my wing and then I would have found it easier.