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Making high Resolution Dive Maps
 
Here a few words on the story behind these maps:
by Mr Alex Beuchel
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In the course of my Dive Master training at, I was confronted with the task of
creating a dive site map. This in itself is of course a rather simple thing to
do and usually wouldn't take more than 5 minutes to pass the requirement
outlined by my instructor. However it sparked a personal challenge in me to
combine my emerging passion for scuba diving with my graphic design abilities as
I work for an advertising agency in Bangkok during week days.
As, of course, in the dive world Pattaya is known for its great ship wrecks,
objects for my dive maps were easily found: the wreck of the HTMS Khram and the
Hardeep wreck. The first one an easy task to achieve, the second one seemingly
impossible.
As the Khram was purpose sunk in the beginning of 2003 to create an artificial
reef and it being one out of over 550 ships of the same type ever built, visual
reference material was readily available. Using existing photographs and only a
few dives on the wreck to check for details, the map of the Khram was finished
in no-time.
Unlike the Hardeep. With this vessel sunk over 60 years ago, no clear
photographs nor any construction plans are known to exist. All you have to start
with is a big wreck of a cargo ship at 26m depth in water with a 5-8m
visibility. Previous drawings of the wreck were sufficient for dive briefs but
lacked an exact scale and sense of proportion and detail needed to brief divers
of varying degrees of wreck diving experience.
After just a few dives I gave up my first attempt at drawing the wreck on my
dive slate in three dimensional perspective. Re-drawing my observations of
individual sections on the computer back in Bangkok after each weekend of
diving, I still was not satisfied with the overall proportions that showed.
Things were still too random. The reasons for that were all apparent: narrow
vision from the mask, distorted scales and sizes of everything through the
water, a low visibility (you only see individual patches but never the context
between them), the whole ship lays on its side so bulkheads become ceilings and
decks become walls, a dive time of only a few minutes and all of it combined
with effects of nitrogen narcosis. I may not have felt this playing Tic-Tac-Toe
at 40m depth during my Deep Spec but trying to reverse-engineer this wreck under
water I sure had to acknowledge that my brain was working at a slower pace.
The only viable option was to measure out the entire wreck with a measure tape
to eventually come up with a two-dimensional 'floor plan'
which would then form the basis of a three-dimensional illustration.
Over the course of many weekends together with a number of very patient dive
buddies this mission was achieved. And diving the
Hardeep had never been more interesting since all the sudden we were forced to
study details that always went missing on a 'regular'
dive.
Back in Bangkok I progressively placed all the collected data in a 1:100 scale
computer design file. Only after this was completed I applied a
three-dimensional rotation to the file of the upper deck to arrive at exactly
the same perspective as the map of the Khram wreck.
Now my previous perspective underwater sketches all had reference points on
which they could be attached to and it became clear in what direction they had
to be enlarged or re-scaled.
Data retrieved in the lower deck served as basis for interior views of the
cabins at the bow which can be penetrated in a variety of (narrow) ways but
somehow always deterred divers from exploring them since there wasn't much known
or other divers that knew had difficulty explaining their structure.
Today the dive maps serve as invaluable aids to the dive briefs on the local
dive boats. As a picture says more than a thousand words, even divers with no
previous wreck diving experience gain full understanding and confidence in
diving the wrecks. Furthermore, even divers that have visited the Hardeep many
times before can now plan dives to very specific portions of the wreck and
explore them in detail.
(Alex Beuchel, DiveMaster, February 2005)
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