Free DMT refresher training today and tomorrow (1/15 and 1/16) will be in Room 360. Running all day long (from 0800 to 1600).

Courtesy of Prime Time and Aqueos.

Topics to be covered are:

IV therapy, advanced airway management, and neurological examinations.

This is completely free and can be accredited toward recertification. Open to non-DMT's as well. Bring your ADC card and be sure to explore the exhibit hall as well.

All divers are brothers. Anthony Fernandisse is leading the charge to help out the family of a hand who was a significant part of GOM diving for a long time. Help a brother out.

I am writing seeking your help for the family of a friend of mine and many of you, Bob Hamby, who has passed away. Bob Hamby passed away July 25th 2012 after a long fight against cancer and liver disease.

He was a foundation block in the commercial diving industry dating back decades. He was also an 82nd Airborne Vietnam veteran that volunteered to serve his country as an unpopular war raged in 1967 as a 16 year old kid with a mothers signature and permission. Bob has been out of work for several years battling this illness and has had no source of income for some time now. His saving's, retirement accounts, and a lot of personal property have been wiped out as a result of his battle against disease.

He leaves his family in a financial hole that threatens to take the home he built to retire in with his wife Rhonda and two sons. He had no medical or life insurance and has left a mountain of debt his family must now deal with after losing a son, father, and husband that Bob was. I ask you to please follow the link below to a web page I made to allow people to make anonymous donations to his family. Any amount will help a family that has nothing and has suffered so much over the past few years. If you can manage to donate the cost of three gallons of gas, $10.00, we can uplift this family send a blessing it desperately needs. Please help if you can and God Bless!

Not necessarily what you think it is, then again...

PDF file, single page. Download it here.

"Where are the band aids?”

"Supervisor wanted you to see this."

“Hey man, can you take a look at something for me?"

As a medic offshore I get a lot of these types of questions. Years ago being the Diver Medic was all about figuring out what treatment table to use. Next came some basic life support and knowledge about patching up trauma. Sure I can do CPR, start an IV, and even drop in an ET tube. But when was the last time we needed to do these?

The new Divers Galleries are online now. These are individual gallery spaces for registered users. Pretty easy to figure out.  Log in and do it up. Drop me an email if you get hung up.

You can administer your own place. Feel free to log in and explore. I'm also gonna be adding pics submitted to Offshore Diver to this new gallery system. You can still email pics, or upload them yourself now. All images in the new galleries are also commentable.

About your Original Images: Original full resolution images are never displayed and are never available for download. Your property is your property. OD generates a 600 px wide image and a thumbnail from your original and those two images are what appear in the galleries.

Hope you find the new gallery structure useful. The old gallery will stick around. Hell, before there was Facebook, there was the Offshore Diver Photo Gallery. Got over a decade's worth of oilfield diving pics in there from hundreds of site visitors - works out to more than 3000 pics.

Sidney Rock, long time employee of Jack Vilas and a guy who knew more about fixing dive hats than just about anybody, has died. Sidney passed away Sunday afternoon, the 13th of March, 2011. He will be long remembered for his ever ready and slightly cynical laughter, and the amazing way he handled those tiny little regulator parts with those big ole fingers of his.

Visitation will begin March 15, 2011 at 6:00pm at the New Life Tabernacle Church, 811 Roderick Street, in Morgan City. Visitation will continue throughout the night with services beginning at 10:00am on Wednesday, March 16, 2011.

A team of three science divers have found high levels of ethyl benzene and xylene in their blood after completing 15 to 20 dives over the summer and early fall of 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico Main Pass, Mississippi Canyon, and Grand Isle areas. These hands were diving full rubber but not hazmat gear, as they were told it was safe to dive where they were. Dives ran about :30 and were mianly mid-water, shooting video. Steve Kolian was one of the divers. He runs EcoRigs, a self-funded Non-profit Corporation that studies the marine life on offshore platforms.

Initially, we were told it was safe to dive offshore but about the end of July, one of us started to show unusual symptoms and quit diving by mid-August. Then another member became sick in late September and we all stopped diving. Our last dive was October 12^th 2010. Collectively, our symptoms included blood in our stool, bleeding from the nose and eyes, nausea, diarrhea, stomach cramps and dizziness and confusion. The symptoms did not appear all at once but were intermittent and were not compounded but occurred independently. They started in July and will continue, I fear, into the future. Corexit and ethyl benzene attack the hemoglobin in the red blood cells and causes ruptures in the blood cell lining.

A Poker Run for Shane Eads is set for April 16th to begin at the Rockin' Whiskey in New Iberia. If you don't know Shane, he's a Ranger Dive Sup and he got hit by a truck in January. Great guy. Click on the poster to see it bigger.

 On January 25, 2011, Shane Eads’ life was forever changed by an unimaginable tragedy.  He was working at a road construction site on I-49 just north of Lafayette, LA.  The road crew had closed one lane to make repairs, causing traffic to be diverted to the other open lane and creating delays.  A driver became impatient and moved out of his lane, striking a trailer.  As result, Shane was pinned between the trailer and a truck parked at the construction site.  To make matters worse, the vehicles could not be moved until emergency personnel arrived – his right leg appeared to be severed and to move him would have been fatal.

Christian J. Lambertsen, a scientist and doctor who invented an underwater breathing system used by the military in World War II and later coined the "scuba" acronym by which such systems are widely known, has died at 93 on February 11th, 2011. You're familiar with the Lambertsen deco tables we've all got in the back of our ops manuals? This was the guy.

FREDRICK M PERNERT, 65 of New Orleans passed away on Feb. 19, 2011.  He was born Jan 14, 1946 in Lansing, Michigan.  Fred served his country from 1967 to 1968 in  Vietnam and completed his service in 1973.  He traveled the world as a  professional oil field diver for many years  has been a supervisor at Legacy  Offshore.

A memorial service will be held Wed February 23, 2011 @ Mothe's Funeral Home in  Harvey LA.  He will then be layed to rest in Michigan along side his parents and  sister.

RIP Brother

Shane Eads was struck by a truck tuesday  the 25th. He's down better than half a leg and got his pelvis crushed. It ain't good. Right now he's in the ICU at Lourdes in Lafayette and looks to be moving to Tulane tomorrow. Shane's gone through 10 to 12 units of blood, which is almost as much as you got to start with, so if you're of the prayin persuasion, now would be a good time.

The Shane Eads Recovery Fund has a page on FaceBook.

http://www.facebook.com/shaneeadsrecoveryfund

If you're out of state and wanting to donate blood, see the Facebook page for more on that. There's also info on there about how you can send them a few bucks to help. Shane's been down here in the Gulf for better'n a decade. A much loved and respected Brother. Currently supervising at Ranger Offshore. Wife Ashley, and two kids. Email them at shaneeadsrecoveryfund@gmail.com

Rees does his diving around Australia

    Some of the lessons learnt for me on the job from the old hands are:
    For underwater nav in near zero vis, a compass is your best friend.  We would take a rough bearing between the two drill strings on the surface, then when you need to move between them on bottom (knowing the distance) pace it out while staying on heading.
    When diving at night Glow sticks! Glow Sticks! Glow sticks!  These wonderful little beams of light could save minutes per hole when loading the explosives.  Doesn't sound like much, but over 24 holes it can be the difference between you getting the job done and having to send another diver in to finish your work.
      A set of good Carabiners (screwgates) is like an extra set of hands.

b l e e d i n g   p e t r o l e u m

picture courtesy of S Struble

So last year Epic killed a well out in the Gulf and this year you can watch them on TV. That's cool. The shows (two of them) air on May 19th and 26th at 2100 hrs eastern time on the National Geographic Channel.

From the news:

Deepwater Horizon Fire: 11 Employees Missing After Oil Rig Explosion.  Last night, an oil rig explosion at an off shore drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico severely injured 7 workers, and left 11 missing.

Many of the rig’s 126 people on board were able to escape safely without harm. The owners of the drilling platform are hoping that the missing individuals are somewhere on a life raft.  They are scouring the area in search of a life raft.