In August I flew to Seattle, WA, which is home to the NOAA Diving Center, where LCDR Faith Knighton is the Executive Officer and helps manage over 400 NOAA divers around the world.  She was kind enough to host me for the day so that I could get a closer look at their operations.

The NOAA Diving Center serves as the training and administrative headquarters for the NOAA Diving Program.  The center hosts courses that give scientists, engineers, and NOAA Corps Officers the skills they need to perform NOAA diving operations in various conditions and locations.  The center also provides courses in hyperbarics and diving medicine for physicians and diving medical technicians.

The center is fully equipped for these courses and to support all NOAA diving operations, with several hyperbaric chambers, an underwater dive training site off the pier, multiple boats, and plenty of well-maintained and in-service dive gear.

An experience I won’t ever forget though is going on a chamber dive under the diving center staff’s close supervision!  The easiest way to describe it is like being inside of a giant scuba cylinder that is being pressurized and then depressurized.  On the way down to 130 feet it was rather warm and on the way up a bit chilly!

Thank you to LCDR Faith Knighton for showing me around and opening her home to me, and to all of the NOAA Diving Center staff for a great visit!  I learned a lot about the enormous effort and organization necessary for keeping NOAA divers safely working in the field year-round.

I also made sure to stop into National Geographic’s Lindblad Expeditions office in Seattle.  Each year, Lindblad does its best to get the OWUSS Rolex Scholars onto one of their incredible trips.  This year, Michelle Graves is working hard to get us on an expedition!

After these visits I quickly boarded a ferry from Seattle to Victoria, BC….next stop Browning Pass!  Stay tuned for another post about this magical dive site off Vancouver Island.