The Diving Smurf, nickname for a dive instructor in Curaçao, went for a really deep dive. The target was the wreck of the Stella Maris at 450 feet deep, way beyond the safe diving limits for a recreational dive. The Diving Smurf, although adventurous, is not that reckless to do this with traditional dive equipment. This happened in a safe way with the submarine of Curaçao Substation.
The opportunity for this deep dive arose with the arrival of two American archaeologists in Curaçao for a pilot project in cooperation with Substation Curaçao and Stimana; purpose of the pilot project was to investigate the possibilities of the submarine for archaeological research. With normal diving equipment the sea can by studied till about 40 meters. This area is accessible for every advanced diver with the risk of them disturbing or taking away historical artifacts and is also vulnerable for damage by storms. The area beyond this depth is less accessible and less vulnerable and for that reason attractive for archaeological study.
Substation Curaçao made the submarine including crew available at no cost for this pilot project. The archaeological team consisted of the two American archaeologists, Dennis Knepper and Raymond Hayes, Michiel van der Huls as the submarine's pilot, François van der Hoeven as project coordinator and John Dohmen as navigator and photographer (and as an uninvited guest the Diving Smurf).
Two dives were made. The first dive in the morning at the historical anchor place Jan Thiel and the second one after lunch in front of the harbor of Substation Curaçao. During these dives several techniques were tried such as the execution of search patterns to find artifacts, determining the exact location of artifacts, measuring the dimensions of artifacts and photographing artifacts in their context. During the first dive a large 19th century anchor, previously found by the Curasub crew, was located and studied at about 80 meters. During the second dive several objects were promoted to artifacts to simulate a real life search and the final target for this dive was the wreck of the Stella Maris. This wreck lies at a depth of 450 feet on its starboard side. The submarine hovered at 410 feet in front of the bow deck. With the powerful lights of the submarine a lot of detail is visible on the wreck. The light also helps in taking pictures of the wreck. Taking pictures with sufficient quality is not easy though because of the low light conditions and the thick front dome. Use of the strobe is not possible because of reflections in the front window. High ISO settings are necessary which results in higer noise in the pictures and even with this high sensitivity the exposure time is still 1/10 seconds with the lights on. And the lack of color in deep water is always a problem. Given all this the picture quality is quite acceptable.
The results of this pilot project are very satisfactory. The use of the submarine for this kind of research is very promising. Future projects will target the many anchor places along the coast of Curaçao.
