Electronic diving data collection during Monitor expedition 2001

The USS Monitor is a famous iron-clad ship that fought in the America Civil War and sunk during a storm off the coast of North Carolina in 1862. Since 1973, when its location was identified, several organizations have surveyed the wreck and recovered artifacts. In the summers of 2000 and 2001, the U.S. Navy participated with the National Oceanic and Aeronautics Association (NOAA) in a set of historical preservation dives on the Monitor. The U.S. Navy used recently modified Surface Supplied Helium Oxygen Decompression Tables. The modifications reduced the oxygen toxicity had been reported by operational users. The modified tables had not been man-tested. Instead, the decision was made to dive the modified tables on the Monitor mission and to record the dive profiles in research-quality detail. NEDU used the dive logs to record the dive-specific and outcome data. Available commercial dive computers (DC) were used to electronically log the dive profiles. This paper describes the dive results from the dives performed during 2001. There were 387 man-dives recorded during the diving operations of 17 July 2001 - 24 August 2001. There was one case of decompression sickness Type II which was successfully treated with a Treatment Table 6 with extensions. Four divers were treated with mandatory Treatment Table 6 for having had excessive delays due to ear squeezes while being compressed for the in-chamber phase of the tables. The logged profiles demonstrate the usefulness of the detailed log, since the time at depth for some dives was spent up to 30 feet of seawater shallower than other dives even though the maximum depths were the same, and that depth difference would not have been logged in the normal dive logs. Then electronic data collection system does appear to work well if you have on-site investigators who will record the data. The system also offers the ability to decrease the number of laboratory dives necessary to field new decompression tables.