Captain Trevor Jackson (born 26 November 1965) is an Australian technical diver, shipwreck researcher, author and inventor. In 2002 he staged what became known as the "Centaur Dive", which subsequently led to the gazetted position of the sunken Hospital Ship AHS Centaur being questioned. Jackson is the inventor of the 'Sea Tiger' lost diver location system, and an author on the subject of wreck diving.
Jackson had doubted the accuracy of the Australian Government's original findings for some time [1] before he and New Zealand diver, Dr Simon Mitchell, supported by a team of 15 back-up divers, staged a world record scuba dive to investigate the site. The dive took place near Brisbane on 14 May 2002, after nearly a year of planning. [2] At a depth of 178 m (584 ft), the dive was the deepest scuba dive to a wreck undertaken at the time, a world record which held for several years. [3] A camera was taken to the bottom by Jackson but pressure related equipment difficulties meant that no usable footage was retrieved. Despite the lack of conclusive proof, the pair remained adamant for several years that the wreck they had seen on the dive was too small to be the Centaur. Jackson was quoted on the 60 minutes current affairs program: "this wasn't a wreck of the dimensions that the Centaur was which, you know, was 100m long. It was a much smaller thing". [4] They suspected that the wreck was a small freighter called the Kyogle, sunk in 1951 by the Royal Australian Air Force. [4] [5] [6] Eventually their insistence prompted investigations by the media and the Royal Australian Navy. [7] It was subsequently shown that the Centaur was not where it had been assumed. [8] [9] [10] In 2009 the Queensland Government approved funding for a renewed search for the lost hospital ship. [11] The true resting place of the Centaur was discovered in December of that year. [12]
Between 1998 and 2004 Jackson was directly responsible for the initial discovery of at least 19 shipwrecks in the Coral Sea. [13] These ships included the Dutch dredger Kaptajn Nielsen, [14] [15] the USNS Dolphin, [7] [16] the SS Dover, [17] and the SV Missie. The latter contained a vast collection of 19th century glassware and is now a declared historic shipwreck. Most of these wrecks lay in depths well beyond the normal limits for recreational scuba diving. In 2005 he won the OZTek Technical Diver of the Year award for his services to wreck exploration. [18] Jackson's research into the exact position and depths of shipwrecks is currently being utilized by the Australian Hydrographic Office for new editions of admiralty charts for Queensland. [19] [20] The Australian Hydrographic Office also removed the protected zone from around the 'old' Centaur position. [21]
In January 2009 Jackson was involved in the Australian National Maritime Museum's discovery and initial survey dives of the 19th century historical Australian shipwreck, HMCS Mermaid [1829], [22] and the Queensland Museum's discovery of the SV Waverley [1889] near Thirsty Sound, Qld, in March later that year. [23] [24] [25] [26]
Captain Jackson is the author of two books on the subject of wreck diving: Wreck Diving in Southern Queensland and Diveabout: Wrecks in Northern Queensland. [27] He is an active writer for several dive publications and websites.
During 2009, Jackson patented a system of using specially designed buoys to locate divers lost on the surface. [28] [29] The system has been adopted by dive operators in the US, New Zealand and Australia. [30] [31] The system draws upon the 'deliberate error theory', utilized by US Navy pilots during World War II to relocate their aircraft carriers. More significantly, it involved the development of buoys tested and weighted to exactly replicate the drift characteristics of non-swimming divers on the surface of the ocean, and the use of timed and measured vessel manoeuvres. [32] [33]
A buoy is a floating device that can have many purposes. It can be anchored (stationary) or allowed to drift with ocean currents.
In underwater diving, open water is unrestricted water such as a sea, lake or flooded quarries. It is the opposite of confined water (diving) where diver training takes place. Open water also means the diver has direct vertical access to the surface of the water in contact with the Earth's atmosphere. Open water diving implies that if a problem arises, the diver can directly ascend vertically to the atmosphere to breathe air. Penetration diving—involving entering caves or wrecks, or diving under ice—is therefore not "open water diving". In some contexts the lack of a decompression obligation is considered a necessary condition for classification of a dive as an open water dive, but this does not affect the classification of the venue as open water.
Wreck diving is recreational diving where the wreckage of ships, aircraft and other artificial structures are explored. Although most wreck dive sites are at shipwrecks, there is an increasing trend to scuttle retired ships to create artificial reef sites. Diving to crashed aircraft can also be considered wreck diving. The recreation of wreck diving makes no distinction as to how the vessel ended up on the bottom.
Recreational diver training is the process of developing knowledge and understanding of the basic principles, and the skills and procedures for the use of scuba equipment so that the diver is able to dive for recreational purposes with acceptable risk using the type of equipment and in similar conditions to those experienced during training.
Recreational diving or sport diving is diving for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment, usually when using scuba equipment. The term "recreational diving" may also be used in contradistinction to "technical diving", a more demanding aspect of recreational diving which requires greater levels of training, experience and equipment to compensate for the more hazardous conditions associated with the disciplines. Breath-hold diving for recreation also fits into the broader scope of the term, but this article covers the commonly used meaning of scuba diving for recreational purposes, where the diver is not constrained from making a direct near-vertical ascent to the surface at any point during the dive, and risk is considered low.
Police diving is a branch of professional diving carried out by police services. Police divers are usually sworn police officers, and may either be employed full-time as divers or as general water police officers, or be volunteers who usually serve in other units but are called in if their diving services are required.
A dive boat is a boat that recreational divers or professional scuba divers use to reach a dive site which they could not conveniently reach by swimming from the shore. Dive boats may be propelled by wind or muscle power, but are usually powered by internal combustion engines. Some features, like convenient access from the water, are common to all dive boats, while others depend on the specific application or region where they are used. The vessel may be extensively modified to make it fit for purpose, or may be used without much adaptation if it is already usable.
Ron Josiah Taylor, AM was a prominent Australian shark expert, as is his widow, Valerie Taylor. They were credited with being pioneers in several areas, including being the first people to film great white sharks without the protection of a cage. Their expertise has been called upon for films such as Jaws, Orca and Sky Pirates.
Sinking ships for wreck diving sites is the practice of scuttling old ships to produce artificial reefs suitable for wreck diving, to benefit from commercial revenues from recreational diving of the shipwreck, or to produce a diver training site.
Site Recorder is a geographical information system (GIS) and information management system (IMS) designed for use in maritime, freshwater and intertidal archaeology. Site Recorder can be used on maritime and intertidal archaeology projects for real-time data collection, decision support, publication, archiving and data migration. The program is designed for use by archaeologists rather than GIS experts.
Simon Mitchell is a New Zealand physician specialising in occupational medicine, hyperbaric medicine and anesthesiology. Trained in medicine, Mitchell was awarded a PhD for his work on neuroprotection from embolic brain injury. Mitchell has also published more than 45 research and review papers in the medical literature. Mitchell is an author and avid technical diver. He also wrote two chapters of the latest edition of Bennett and Elliott's Physiology and Medicine of Diving, is the co-author of the diving textbook Deeper Into Diving with John Lippmann and co-authored the chapter on Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine with Michael Bennett.
David Apperley is an Australian technical diver and cave explorer. Apperley holds instructor levels in cave diving, Deep Mixed Gas Diving and Deep Closed Circuit Rebreather Diving and was the expedition co-ordinator for the Pearse Resurgence Project 1996–2003. He was the project leader on the Royal Mail Ship Niagara 2003 Survey Project, which involved the organization and planning of putting some of the world's most experienced divers onto the 130-metre-deep Niagara wreck site, off the North Island of New Zealand.
Peter Christopher is an Australian author and photographer who writes about shipwrecks and riverboats. He is also a Director of the not for profit organisation, Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Ltd (CSCOAL), set up to save the 1864 clipper ship, City of Adelaide.
David Godwin Burchell BEM was a South Australian business man, a recreational scuba diver and a football administrator.
Save Ontario Shipwrecks (SOS) is a Provincial Heritage Organization in Ontario, Canada. SOS is a public charitable organization which operates through Local Chapter Committees supported by a Provincial Board of Directors and Provincial Executive.
Diving Equipment and Marketing Association, is an international organization dedicated to the promotion and growth of the recreational scuba diving and snorkeling industry. With more than 1,300 members, this non-profit, global organization promotes scuba diving through consumer awareness programs and media campaigns such as the national Be a Diver campaign; diver retention initiatives such as DiveCaching; and an annual trade-only event for businesses in the scuba diving, action watersports and adventure/dive-travel industries, DEMA Show.
Scuba diving tourism is the industry based on servicing the requirements of recreational divers at destinations other than where they live. It includes aspects of training, equipment sales, rental and service, guided experiences and environmental tourism.
Valerie Olson van Heest is an American author, explorer, and museum exhibit designer. She is co-founder of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association.
Recreational scuba certification levels are the levels of skill represented by recreational scuba certification. Each certification level is associated with a specific training standard published by the certification agency, and a training programme associated with the standard., though in some cases recognition of prior learning can apply. These levels of skill can be categorised in several ways:
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