So one might ask, where do you find such 

 people and what do you offer? Quite frankly 

 (and somewhat mysteriously), they find you 

 and surmounting the challenge seems to be 

 reward in itself. Commonality of back- 

 grounds, such as education, technical train- 

 ing and the like, is not readily apparent. 

 Most however, have spent a major portion of 

 their adult life working with the sea, either 

 in the Navy or with commercial enterprises. 

 Many, through various channels, simply 

 drift into the submersible area, others specif- 

 ically seek out the field. In either case, all 

 have a capacity for hard work and seem to 

 possess an unusually wide-ranging knowl- 

 edge of seamanship, diving, electronics and 

 other skills related to submersibles. Admit- 

 tedly it would be quite helpful to state the 

 desirable background characteristics to look 

 for in a submersible operator and the sup- 

 port crew, but, in the author's experience, all 

 are quite individualistic and, like submers- 

 ibles themselves, defy categorization. Yet 

 each seems to have a particular skill that 

 contributes to a successful operation. 



In this respect, an incident comes to mind 

 of a lost current meter array retrieved by 

 ALUMINAUT in 1967 off St. Croix, Virgin 

 Islands. ALUMINAUT, at that time, was the 

 ultimate in deep submefrgence technology, it 

 represented the best efforts of the best scien- 

 tific and engineering expertise industry and 

 academia could offer. In the course of re- 



trieval it dived, made the necessary hookup 

 and performed perfectly. The final step, how- 

 ever, was to reel the retrieving line onto the 

 support ship. To complicate matters, when 

 the array line began appearing at the sur- 

 face it was a snarled and tangled mass of 

 nylon rope, wire and current meters. At this 

 point the knot-tying and load-handling tal- 

 ents of an ex-navy bosun, Mr. Doug Farrow, 

 were required for several hours to success- 

 fully bring the spaghetti-like mess aboard. 



The "manned" component, therefore, re- 

 quires skills which range from those tracea- 

 ble to the Phoenicians to those developed in 

 the space age. Man's ancestors, it is said, left 

 the ocean in primordial times; since recorded 

 history it is evident that he has tried, with 

 some success, to return. In earlier days it 

 was in wood and leather diving bells and 

 suits; now it is in steel and plastic shells. 

 Whatever the means, it has always been 

 man; never machines, against the sea. The 

 instruments, be they submersibles, subma- 

 rines, towed devices or whatever, are inani- 

 mate, inert and functionless without the in- 

 tervention of a human being. Regardless of 

 its duration, if the return to the sea is to be 

 successful, an arsenal of human talents must 

 be drawn from the pages of ancient and 

 recent history. The knot tier, the navigator, 

 the mariner, the engineer and the theoreti- 

 cal scientist all share equal responsibilities 

 and all can be found somewhere in the suc- 

 cessful submersible system. 



11 



