Fig. 13-7 A tangle ot cable at 5.500 feet in the Bahamas as seen Iron ALVIN 



turbance of the wreckage could cause them 

 to implode with consequent serious damage 

 to a submersible in the vicinity. 



Bottom Hardware and Buoyed Arrays: Bottom 



hardware may consist of military tracking 

 devices, oil pipelines and completion systems, 

 and a host of scientific equipment. Similar to 

 cables and wrecks, they present another 

 form of potential entanglement. Most bottom 

 hardware has one thing in common: cables 

 generally lead from them to shore or surface 

 terminals. Some of this hardware is very 

 heavy and may have moved downslope fol- 

 lowing implantment. This can result in the 

 attendant cable being stretched taut from 



the equipment and suspended several feet 

 off the bottom so that the bottom-crawling 

 submersible may pass under the cable. The 

 array itself may have several appendages 

 protruding outward which can snare the sub- 

 mersible. These appendages may be many 

 feet off the bottom and not visible to the 

 operator when bottomed. 



The most hazardous aspect of all arrays, 

 moors and similar hardware may result from 

 the method used to install them. In many 

 cases additional lines are used to lower the 

 device and are left on it for subsequent re- 

 trieval. The result is an undisclosed and gen- 

 erally unknown number of lines or cables 



634 



