Rebreather Friendly Live Aboard in Tanzania

Rebreather Friendly Live Aboard in Tanzania
By Andreas W Matthes


Sailing up and down the Swahili coast of Tanzania, cruising past places that sound exotic such as Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar and Pemba, while pointing the finger onto a marine chart saying “that looks nice, lets dive here and explore it”, looking into the blue water and onto a sparsely inhabited East African coast, don your CCR ( Closed Circuit Rebreather ), SCR ( Semi Closed Rebreather ) or recreational kit as you see fit and plunge into the unknown.

This is the reality of Tanzania’s only live a board ship and research vessel, the 30 year old German built 130 foot \ 40 metre steel vessel The Kairos that has been outfitted with an extraordinary array of equipment. It is a privilege to explore parts of our planet earth in today’s time and age, to step where no man has ever stepped before, to report and document.


I was invited to join the Coelacanths expedition organized by The Kairos Company jointly with the University of Tanzania as a DSO (Diving Safety Officer) to explore and document the habitat of the elusive Coelacanth fish that has been found in fossils as old as 300 millions years old, a link into the past. The expedition was set up as a mainly CCR deep diving exploratory trip due to the extreme depth of the habitat which is reported to be deeper than 100 meters \ 330 feet.

The team consisted of:

• The Kairos company owners - Thierry on CCR KISS and Catrine, diving OC (Open Circuit)
• Professor Mokama of the University of Tanzania, diving OC
• Hyperbaric Physician, Andre and French Federation Instructor, Pascal who both dive CCR Inspiration,
• T.D. and Jitka both Florida Residents, who dive Inspiration and Megadolon respectively
• SCR divers Magali and Phong, from France
• Concluding with DSO Matt on Megadolon, from Mexico

Besides the team, we had the crew consisting of:

• Jean Francois the Mix Master
• Arnod the Chief Engineer
• Xavier the Captain
• Deck Hands and Chase Boat Captains Soloka, Mbaya and Anthony,
• DaDa and Siti the Maids
• And last but not least Hasami the Cook

On board the Kairos you will find a incredible collection of equipment such as a double lock, two-person hyperbaric chamber including trained staff to run it, two large Bauer compressors, a Nitrox membrane system, a booster pump, banked EAN 32, banked air, plenty of Oxygen and Helium, a large array of tanks, 7 SCR Dolphin, 1 CCR KISS, 1.5 tons of small stuff Sofnolime, 10 Apollo Scooters, Digital still and video cameras and housings, an ultra light plane, two Zodiac chase boats, various networked multi media computers with video editing software connected to a large plasma screen.

The ship itself has a state of the art navigation system that links two GPS systems into the electronic marine charts, the autopilot and the high resolution depth sounder into one unit to enable the ship to conduct underwater survey of geologic features and produce a 3D map of the environment to be dived and explored. An extraordinary tool for aquatic research and exploration.

The difference between a normal live a board and the expedition live aboard is that you mostly don’t know where you will be diving since you are the first one who is diving there, that there are no known maps of the dive sites other then the survey done by the ship itself and the electronic or in the case of Pemba some over 120 year old print marine charts from a survey by the HMS Fawn from 1878.

The first days of the Expedition where spend on team and procedure building, to have the deep diving team consisting on Andre, Pascal, Jitka and T.D. come together, acclimatize to the environment as well as giving the DSO time to refine the deco station procedure, chase boat coordination and support diver protocol.


After arriving on site at the village of Kigombe, where most of the Coelacanth have been fished in recent years, a group of the team went on shore to interview the local Fishery department and trying to locate one of the fishermen who have actually caught a Coelacanth and could possibly lead us to the site, succeeding actually in locating Sahid, who has caught a Coelacanth prior to our arrival who then came onboard and let us to the fishing site. A day was spend to survey the site discovering the there where potential wall features with the ledge of the wall at 100 meters \ 330 feet. A temperature sensor was dropped to some 400 feet \ 120 meters to investigate and record the needed habitat water temperature of 18 - 19 Celsius \ 70 Fahrenheit which was encountered at 85 meters \ 280 feet or deeper.

The first deep dive led the team to 97 meters \ 318 feet to locate and document the habitat with HD (High Definition) video and digital still photography. After more survey and data interpretation a second deep dive was conducted to 124 meters \ 406 feet to the actual wall to video the habitat and search for Coelacanth. The HD video documentation of the habitat was successful the location of the Coelacanth was not. After further analization of the survey data a second probable location of the elusive but territorial fish was located, yet another deep dive was planned. During the days of deep diving activity, recreational diving teams went diving on shallower reefs using OC and SCR to investigate and document these shallower sites within recreational diving depth.

A leaking and failing flexible supply hose to the decompression chamber stopped all further deep diving activity and deep exploration. With the next decompression chamber located some 3500 kilometres \ 2100 miles away in South Africa it was deemed an unnecessary risk to continue with the deep diving exploration. The remaining exploratory dives where limited to recreational depth with minimal decompression to minimize the risk of DCI (Decompression Illness). Extremely beautiful and diverse reefs around the island of Pemba and the coastal town of Tanga close to the Kenya border where discovered, surveyed and explored.


A total of 101 dives where conducted during this expedition with 138 hours of in-water time. 48 dives where conducted on OC with 44 hours including support dives, 57 dives on CCR with 87 hours and 6 dives on SCR with 7 hours. 33 dives where conducted on the Inspiration, 13 on the Megadolon, 12 on the KISS and 6 on the Dolphin. During the expedition, we had zero incidents or accidents. The exploration of the Tanzanian coastline will be continued.


For more information log on to the following web page www.thekairoscompany.com.


Matt


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