A bridge that holds water going over another body of Water. link: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Photo Gallery (Water Bridge) Weird Ubi

I took some pictures and have uploaded them onto the website. The pictures are of damaged platforms from the last two Huricanes. Offshore Pictures ubi

This post is an excerpt from the Offshore Journal post. I thought that the event that it describes needed its own post.

Swimming with Sharks

11/14/05: Today, I jumped into a group of sharks that were swimming below our ladder. After the jump, the bubbles started to clear and a school of fish appeared. The next thing I saw was a lemon-fish, which does look like a shark, but then I looked a little up and saw the big fish.

A school of 8 - 10 sharks swam into view (I actually thought it was more like 15 individuals, but the next diver saw the sharks to be around 8 to 10 individuals, but the school was already started to move on.) The sharks were a dark mud color. The dark brown on top for their counter shading effect.

As soon as I recognized that they were sharks, which I debated because their mouth structures made them look like huge lemon-fish, I stayed stationary on the downline watching them, frozen in a state of excitement and fear. As I was talking about the situation with the dive supervisor, the school of sharks began to circle the wagons, by doing a complete circle around me. Now I was on high alert.

During the last work trip I kept a Journal of interesting events that happened. Offshore Journal:

Day One 9/18/05: The first day of this journal. Let's see how long it lasts. This is already the seventh day out on this hitch. I have been offshore here in the Bay Marchand for a while now. Although it has mostly been on the M/V Sea Cat, I find myself on the L/B Herring. We are repairing damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. There are reports that 8 satellite platforms have been knocked over. Well today we visited one of these “sideways” platform. We were able to stop a leak coming from some topside valves that were now underwater. Yesterday we repaired a leaking 4” ball valve at a platform. Two days we removed, re-routed, and replaced a riser that connects Fouchon with the offshore oil fields. This line provides about 20% of the production of the Gulf of Mexico. All of the major company's seem to use this pipeline. The last thing we did tonight was to cut a 3” power cable of a platform. We had both ends attached to our lift boat with chains. Tomorrow we will drag the ends 200 ft away from the platform where another crew will splice the ends together. Supposedly this will take 12 hours to do.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Critters (Shark Bait)