How to get into salvage diving?

[Alex Hugh]

Hi all!

I'm a qualified BSAC diver, current a sports diver and undertaking my Dive Leader training. I'm also a qualified and active assistant instructor, teaching at a university club. On top of that I have completed my Search and recovery course and I'm the kit officer and compressor user for the club.

I love the idea of salvage diving, searching for old wrecks, however I have no idea how to get into it? To work in the UK you need a HSE license, but I've read around that you can get private work abroad that requires just personal insurance such as DAN insurance.

Does anyone have any advice or know of any people/projects that are looking for keen divers to help out on up and coming projects?

Cheers
Alex

 

[Edward3c]

Apart from being able to dive what skills/knowledge do you offer. They’re going to be of more interest to an organisation than just diving.

Are you studying for a history degree, do you know how to preserve artefacts when removed from salt water?

 

[JohnnyC]

Find wreck that no one knows about. Loot for all it's worth on the black market. Cash out immediately. Move to a tropical island with numbered banking and no extradition treaty. Go diving for fun and pleasure. Leave the salvage to commercial divers who are getting paid big bucks by a company to do a job, and not dependent on the wreck having One-Eyed Willy's treasure.

Citizen salvage like the stuff you read about in books is stupid expensive snd time consuming, and for every hour you're in the water you're gonna spend 10x as much in libraries and repositories and filling out FOIA requests, etc., etc., etc.... The diving is a very small part of it and there are bunches of other valuable skills you'd want to posses, history, archeology, preservation like mentioned above, plus a literal boat load more.

 

[Celt]

Buy a wreck from London and Liverpool assurance in the area you want to search for non ferrous cargo then go salvage the cargo and spillings from wrecks that have been worked by commercial salvage such as Risdon Beasley,s and others.

 

[Rich Keller]

Apart from being able to dive what skills/knowledge do you offer. They’re going to be of more interest to an organisation than just diving.

Agreed. Diving is just your way of getting to the job. Its what you are able to do once you get there that will make the difference. Your ability to improvise is also very important as you never know for sure what you will find once you get there. The quote below from the US Navy Salvage Engineer's Handbook will give you some idea.

“Ship’s salvage is a science of vague assumptions based on debatable figures from inconclusive instruments, performed with equipment of problematical accuracy by persons of doubtful reliability and of questionable mentality.”

 

[Alex Hugh]

Thanks for the replies!

Although I'm no history student, I have always had an interest in the subject and believe I have the base knowledge and passion/ability to learn. I've worked in many industries already that I was exposed to with no previous experience and without tooting my own horn I've always done well and progressed.

I'm confident that I have the ability to succeed and help out, I'm a hard worker and always up for a challenge! Just doesn't seem to be many opportunities that I can find in the UK and being that I'm a mature student that returned to uni (currently in my final year) I don't have a spare £10k for a HSE license!

 

[Graeme Fraser]

£10k would be for full HSE Surface Supply with Offshore Top up. £3.5k would get you HSE Professional Scuba, not including required chamber orientation and First Aid at Work. Usually the first step for Commercial Divers.

 

[sea_ledford]

First off, salvage diving and searching for old ship wrecks is not the same thing, and aside from possibly needing to be able to use equipment to breathe underwater they have nothing in common.

Salvage, which would be recovering all or parts of modern wrecks, would be done though a commercial diving operation. If that is what you want to do, commercial diving school is the way to go.

If you want to excavate ancient shipwrecks, nautical or marine archaeology is what you are after. And you would have to have a degree, or maybe two.

The exception to the rule seems to be GUE's Project Baseline. They are probably doing more of what it sounds like you are interested in. I'm not sure what the requisite qualifications they are looking for, but it MIGHT be slightly faster than getting a Masters Degree in Nautical Archaeology

 

[ofg-1]

Just get yourself some business cards printed up, and hand them out at marinas. Then, in the dead of night, go and drill holes in the bottom of all the high value boats in the marina. You are in the marine salvage business.

 

[Bob DBF]

Find wreck that no one knows about. Loot for all it's worth on the black market. Cash out immediately. Move to a tropical island with numbered banking and no extradition treaty.

I got as far as the first sentence, but after trying to loot it, I found out that no one cared rather than knew. I never got good enough, but how's island living Johnny?


Bob