arhartts and HiVis are fine for construction workers and equipment operators on land, but when the work site is underwater, it’s time for neoprene and air tanks. Just another day at the office for Global Diving & Salvage, the Anchorage-based provider of marine construction, support services, and casualty response worldwide (as well as all of the images found in the following pages). Saltwater is a harsh environment, so everything it touches needs constant maintenance. Global Diving & Salvage is that handyman, seen to the right repairing the steel jacketing on wharf piles at the Port of Alaska. The work can be cold and dangerous, even bobbing at the surface, so Global Diving & Salvage puts safety first.

Global Diving & Salvage, founded in 1979, has been servicing the offshore oil and gas industry for decades. Crews have experience working from dynamically positioned vessels, four-point moored, lift boats, barges, and floating production systems. One of the regular tasks in Cook Inlet is performing annual subsea inspections for multiple platforms (left).

Part of the safety regime has crew members above water monitoring the air supply to their submerged colleague. At right, Global Diving & Salvage cleans some of the 300 wharf piles at the Port of Alaska in Anchorage, installing fresh steel to replace jacketing that had corroded.

Steel structures can be protected from saltwater by installing anodes, or sacrificial metals that preferentially absorb corrosion. At the Juneau cruise ship terminal, Global Diving & Salvage crews welded 2,331 aluminum anodes onto new pilings. Each anode weighed over 200 pounds, and divers worked at depths as much as 105 feet.

Still, as seen in the top image, working on the water has its rewards when surrounded by the shimmering sea. Here, divers inspect an oil tanker berthing and loading terminal in Prince William Sound.

One of the jobs for the Global Diving & Salvage team is maintenance of mooring buoys. The company conducts annual servicing in depths from 100 to 800 feet using divers and remote-operated vehicles. Other dive services include propeller polishing, intake cleaning, and underwater concrete placement and repair. The company prides itself on finding solutions with minimal impact to facilities and surrounding waters.

Due to high currents in Cook Inlet, pipeline crossings commonly scour the bottom, stressing the pipe. Global Diving & Salvage regularly installs piers to prop up unsupported spans of pipeline.

Dive gear is a vital life-support system, enabling Global Diving & Salvage crews to work at a wide range of depths for extended periods. Divers have audio and video communication with the topside crew at all times. The company also keeps portable decompression chambers to accommodate deep-water or mixed-gas diving.