World class commercial divers train in Huntly

New Zealand’s only commercial diving school is one of just ten in the world. And it’s not by the sea – it’s in Huntly.

The Subsea Training Centre classrooms overlook Lake Puketirini, where its two barges float on the flooded former coal pit. 

More than 50 students are trained there every year and lot of them travel from around the globe to get their qualifications. 

Operations manager Mike Pascoe said the school was originally started in the early 2000s in Auckland, on the wharves in the harbour.

“It was founded by keen diver Alan Strong who was involved with Stirling Sports and Dive HQ,” Mike said. 

“He tried it up in Lake Pupuke on the North Shore in Auckland and it was just a little bit too hard there so he started looking for other lakes. He looked at Lake Taupo, but couldn’t get approval to teach there. 

“Then he found this lake. It’s 87m deep in the middle, so pretty deep. He got approval and in 2005 they moved the school down to Huntly.” 

Mike said commercial diving was a lot different to recreational diving and a difficult industry to get into because the training wasn’t available everywhere.

“We’re NZQA-approved so the students can get funding to come here. All of the graduates from this year and last year have all gone into work – we cannot keep up with the demand. I get phone calls twice a week looking for divers and as soon as they leave here, they’ve already got a job – it’s great.”

There are 11 staff members at the school and Mike said each member helped to keep it running smoothly.

“Our school in New Zealand is recognised worldwide as one of the leaders in good quality training – we’ve done training in the United Arab Emirates, and we’re looking at doing training in Singapore and South Africa. There’s a big demand for us to go to the rest of the world for training.

“Likewise, we have a good number of international students coming in. They know if they come here they get a good name. At the moment, we have a guy from India, a guy from Belgium, a guy from France, a guy from the States, a guy from the UK who resides in Malaysia, as well as lots of Kiwis and Aussies. 

“It’s an internationally recognised certificate, so you can work anywhere in the world.

“It’s pretty funny for it to be in little old Huntly.”

He said the school’s roll was mainly made up of young men in their 20s, but they had around two women a year come through and have trained people up to the age of 55. Participants just have to pass the physical.

So, what does a commercial diver actually do? Mike said the best way to describe them was as an underwater labourer.

“Any task underwater, they can go and do. What we do here is a five-month course. We teach them the basic use of all the tools underwater and the use of all the equipment to get there. We teach them how to get to work and how to get back safely. Really, they learn their trade once they get out to work because it’s so varied what they can do – they can do construction, welding, cutting, ship work, underwater videos, photography, survey measurement, so many things.”

Mike said they also trained the Navy and sometimes the Police, but the commercial diving students moved two or three levels above that qualification.

Mike said he got into diving after a military career and then spent 10 years in the industry.

He said diving could take you to some pretty interesting places. He recalled once having to dive into the water pipes in the main street in Wellington in his full diving suit while people watched from their offices.

“With commercial diving, you’re only making money if you’re away from home. You get sent to the Pacific Islands and all around New Zealand.”

But for him, he said, having young kids has meant he’s had to settle down and he couldn’t think of a better job or place to be settled – which has been Huntly four the past four years.

The school not only produces world class commercial divers, it also contributes to the economy in “little old Huntly”.

“We average 50 to 55 students a year and 90 per cent of them stay at the camping ground so we keep that place full and they keep the bakeries busy,” Mike laughed.

He said the lake itself was the perfect training area.

“It’s cold and dark – it’s not somewhere you’d want to go for a recreational dive for a look around.

“Because it’s a flooded quarry, it’s quite steep on the sides and there are lots of trees, big trees, so there’s a big entanglement hazard and the bottom is quite soft so if it stirs up, the visibility can be quite poor. It’s really good for training.”

He said the students always had two-way communication with each other and a supervisor to oversee everything.

“They also have an umbilical cord so there’s always something to follow to come back. For all training, we’ve got a staff standby diver so if they need to they can go and pull them out.”

The umbilical cord/cable is a bunch of intertwined cables that are attached to the diver’s suit. The diver's umbilical is typically made up of a gas hose and a diver communications cable. The gas hose is open at the diver's end and connected to a pressure gauge on the surface gas panel, where the supervisor can use it to measure the diver's depth in the water at any time. This is done by measuring pressure of the air in the hose after a thin stream of bubbles has been emitted from the open end. The umbilical serves as a lifeline and is capable of lifting the diver safely.

The full standard diving suit can weigh up to 86kg.

Other cords in a diver’s umbilical will also have a hot water supply hose for the diver's exposure suit, a video cable to allow the surface controller to see the video picture transmitted to the surface from the diver's hat camera, a gas reclaim hose, a tracking hose and a hat light cable.

“The first part of the course we do is on the side of the lake on the bank. It gets them used to playing in the mud and as they progress further they move out to the barges and we dive off.

“Underneath the barge is a platform that we lower down deeper and deeper and deeper as they progress and they just dive down onto their platform and do their task.

“They’ve got cameras on their heads and helmets and lights. We give them a simulated task each day. They might have to go and measure something, or take photos, or weld something, or put nuts and bolts together, pipe work, construction, everything.” 

Mike said for the shallowest dive, which is just under the surface, they can stay down two hours.

“And the deepest dive, 50 metres, they can only spend 15 minutes on the bottom and then they’ll have to decompress and they’ll have about 20 minutes of decompression on the way up – so they’ll have to do stops on the way up.”

He said one of the current training groups was coming to the end of their course and they were learning about surface decompression training. Check out the video above.

“They do in-water decompression and then jump into a chamber and they go back to 12 metres in the chamber and decompress on the surface in a pod. It’s more based on offshore oil and gas work – we train to 50 metres so they can do all that sort of stuff.”

What’s the big deal about decompression? Well, if a diver ascends too quickly, the nitrogen gas in his or her body will expand at such a rate that he or she is unable to eliminate it properly, and the nitrogen will form small bubbles in his or her tissues. This is known as decompression sickness, and can be very painful, lead to tissue death, and can be life threatening.

Mike said the school didn’t have the latest equipment, but that was a good thing.

“It’s definitely not the latest technology, but it’s good gear – it’s equal to what’s happening in the industry. We train to the latest standards and we try to train the latest technique as best we can. There’s no point teaching a student with the best gear because then they’ll be spoilt and when they get into the work force they won’t be able to deal with the old gear.”

And the future is looking bright as he said they’ve just been given approval to do a scientific diving course.

“That’s one area we haven’t been able to train. So, we’ll be able to train the likes of those who work for NIWA or DoC that want to do the scientific side. They’ll come here for two weeks and then the training site we have approved is the Poor Knights Islands so that’s a really nice dive site. They’ll go up there for four days.”

Mike said they were hoping to run that course in September – weather dependent. 

For now, the team is happy training some of the best commercial divers in the world right where they are, in Huntly, Mike said.

“The good thing about Huntly is, it doesn’t matter what the weather is like, we can always train, even if it’s freezing cold.”

Photo: Left to right, Tristan Shepherd, Dean McCarthny, Nathan Marsh, Dave Nuku and Tyler Ellis.

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