At the Canadian Working Divers Institute in Northern Ontario, Gordon Hay and team teaches divers to be the world-class Unrestricted Surface-Supplied Divers in demand around the country in various kinds of industrial scenarios, from energy sector, to municipal services, to coastal aquaculture operations (three coasts).
“We condensed a nine month training program into 12 weeks of intensive training. It runs 12 hours a day, six days a week,” explains Hays, “which is better for the people wanting this kind of career development.” Diving is a job for people willing to do the work as jack-of-all-trades underwater, he says. They may be employed in the energy sector in the Beaufort Sea, or aquaculture on any of the three coasts in Canada. It could take them anywhere in the world,” he says, “Training occurs near Chapleau on Lake Borden, “The work takes people across the country and around the world.”
The training institute runs one course per year for up to 30 students. “We supply room and board from August 7th to about November 1, and train them to a standard that exceeds all other diving training standards in the world, preparing personnel for jobs in the Arctic Ocean, Beaufort Sea, Hibernia oil field, Great Lakes, or anywhere else.” According to Hays, “There is room in the industry for more skilled people. Average age is around 24, but we get students from ages 18 to 40 and up. Our training is surface supply level, making it certified for deeper diving and using more tools underwater. info@canadianworkingdivers.com
Kelly Korol runs Dive Safe commercial diving school in Campbell River, B.C., and says diving training is proving to be a good fit in First Nations communities, divers working in places like Klemtu and on the other side of Vancouver Island at Ahousaht. "We are a trade school teaching commercial diving that leads to employment in a variety of areas, especially sea food harvesting and aquaculture," says Korol. "Diving for urchins in various waters and one student is currently training to be able to harvest goeduck in Ahousaht.
Korol says, "Bands have access to fisheries and licenses and where the community has nothing else going on, diving and using the commercial diving skills from training can lead to employment where you are at home every night with the wife and kids, gainful employment close to home. When the weather is bad, you don't go diving, when the weather is good, you're working in aquaculture site work, or harvesting urchins, scallops, and we train the divers for commercial fisheries and aquaculture.
"We have a couple students from the Hakai Institute, north of Rivers Inlet," (programs at the institute are conducted by partner institutions such as the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia and the University of Northern British Columbia). "Our training enables students to conduct underwater scientific diving studies and other employment is found working in environmental assessments."
Korol is enthusiastic about a current training program he is preparing to deliver to Nunavut, "on clam digging underwater. First Nation and Inuit people have huge pristine clam beds, and we are working out details to deliver training there," and, he notes, "It's a case again of First Nations returning to work in traditionlal lands to fill a huge demand for the resources. The guys here on the west coast and making a living harvesting sea urchin and goeduck, sea cucumbers, and it's filling the demand in the Asian market."
On the recreational side of diving, he notes, "B.C. is cold water diving at its best in the world, strong currents and clear water lots of life on the bottom when you get down there. You see all kinds of activity." Dive safe runs training courses throughout the year, "We do two courses. One is a five-week scuba curse, and the other is a seven-week surface supply course. Surface supply diving is safer and certain kinds of seafood harvests require you to be wearing weighted surface supply gear, to keep you on the bottom while you pick the geoduck off the floor by the neck. It's seven weeks to finish the surface supply course." Aquaculture work is mostly done by scuba trained and equipped divers. Surface supply diving takes longer to learn use of power tools underwater, or welding, and surface supply diving is used on pressure washing boats of marine equipment underwater.
The maintenance of a fish farm is a constant undertaking, underwater, with specific demands by industry, government, and society that are met by specialized outfits like Seaveyors Environmental and Marine Services Ltd., of Courtenay B.C. Canada. Darren Horler is owner of the company started in 2006 to do the work for a thriving aquaculture economy. net pen inspections and environmental monitoring using rov anchoring systems current
"We dive with a minimum two divers on inspection teams, sometimes three, and every situation is unique. Before each dive we come up with the plan. Most aquaculture related dives occur in fairly protected waters, and the teams work around the metal and steel frame net pens, inspecting nets and anchoring systems on a scheduled basis, as well as on-call inspections." Seaveyors is fully equipped with technology-laden water craft and equipment, "a big investment into the industry." He explains, "I am running the operations with eight professionals on staff, including our divers and a biologist to do certified Environmental inspection services."
"We are more than a dive contractor. We are working on top the water a lot, and we do specialized environmental contracting, and I like to think we have top skills with the equipment, but it's a small circle in this industry, and I know everybody personally. It's a tight ship in the underwater surveys industry, and there is a lot of competency. We do all waters, deep sea up to creek habitat."
The company is employed in environmental monitoring, "We get into a lot of third party work that comes from the demand for reports that are submitted to government," says Horler. His company's biology department has done all kinds work in the different Pacific species, commercial and environmental reports on things like goeduck, herring spawn, surveys, urchins, and a tremendous variety of other diving studies and reports made into databases. Reporting is done in many instances for DFO, especially since a transition in coast aquaculture industry report from provincial to federal jurisdiction about a year ago. Meanwhile the diving industry is a growing employment opportunity, "Definitely there are opportunities to get into the business of diving." The schools on the west coast have curriculum and certification level courses at the scuba-level and restricted diving level, which qualifies the graduates with Worksafe BC credentials for work in these kinds of marine services.
BC College of Diving principle Cory Beaudry knows a lot about the province of B.C. below the water line, all across the province and up and down the coast. "We teach unrestricted scuba and my experience with commercial diving begins 21 yrs ago, and I began the company Camcor Diving 19 years ago, and opened the BC College of Diving in 2004, in Sidney BC." The college, which normally averages three courses per year is this year running two courses, one in the spring another in the fall. "The Unrestricted Scuba course is five weeks.
This year's spring and fall courses will be done at the facility in Sidney and in the surrounding ocean waters. They find areas to practice in the 40 metres required to obtain the certification. When done, in his experience on the coastal operation of Camcor Diving, "the main work is aquaculture site maintenance diving in and around the net pens. Another coastal employment from the course is found in seafood harvesting, urchins, goeduck, sea cucumbers. His own company engages 14 full-time divers, "all on aquaculture."
Years ago fish farming maintenance was done by fish farmers themselves, and a lot of maintenance went by the way-side, then as the fish farms became advanced industrialized operations. Open-water certification programs highlight diving physiology, safe diving practices, and diving hazards, Beaudry notes that diving demands a certain physiology that becomes apparent in the training stages.
His business is into diving at fish farms, gaining a career worth of expertise on the maintenance of a fish farm. "It is highly specialized diving and I have been working at it 21 years. In fact, my Operations Manager trained me in the aquaculture diving industry and he has 30 years experience in the fish farming industry. Dives on farm sites are on average on average 70 to 90 feet, to do net pen inspection for DFO, mortality diving, underwater construction of new sites, each of which are anchored with weight systems to prevent billowing from currents, and invasions by sea lions and other predators."
Farms sites on the ocean receive scheduled maintenance, new constructions are done to install or move sites. The waters vary, and in fact, up north the diving gets to be some crazy stuff. Experience really counts in a hazardous environment like deepwater diving. In fact, BC College of Diving has a prerequisite that states all course entrants must have been a recreational diver with over 10 hours bottom time and a WCB Divers medical. He has seen people from a wide range of ages, "We had a woman 57 old in the training, and we recently had a Haisla member, Dennis Robinson, 54, take the course.
In training, as on the job, "I hold safety above all," says Beaudry. I am a CSA Dive committee member, and I am on the Diver Certification Board of Canada, and obtained a certain amount of recognition among colleagues. camcordiving@telus.net