Featured Release Title “The Life of a Diver”
Author Jim Rigney
Non-fiction, diving
Jim Rigney has been a commercial diver since the age
of seventeen. Starting as a harbour diver in northern Tasmania, Jim
has gone on to forge a long and extensive career within the offshore diving
industry, taking him all over the world as an air diver, saturation bell
diver, medical technician and diving superintendent.
Life of a Diver is a collection of Jim’s experiences
and observations from a lifetime within the commercial diving industry, both in
Australia and abroad. It’s the life of a diver who worked on the salvage and survey
following the 1975 Tasman Bridge disaster; who made it a personal mission to
establish Australia’s first saturation diving training facility in the 1990s;
and who once wanted to teach an ill-behaved crew member a lesson and
inadvertently created an Internet viral hit in the process.
Jim also shares his insights from over forty-five
years in a tough but rewarding industry, and how he has navigated the day to
day challenges that come with off-shore work — and what improvements can still
be made.
The life of a diver such as Jim Rigney is one of
adventure, danger and the search for stimulating work and innovation.
Author bio
Rigney was born in Burnie, Tasmania in 1953. He
commenced his career as a commercial diver at the age of seventeen, following a
year working in the underground mines on Tasmania’s west coast so as to finance
his diver training and purchase the necessary equipment.
Jim progressed from harbor diving and commenced
abalone diving in Tasmania in 1972 but became increasingly frustrated with the
tedium that abalone diving had to offer, compared to the challenges of the
subsea construction industry.
Fate would deliver the opportunity to leave the
abalone industry and pursue a career as a construction diver when the ill-fated
Lake Illawarra struck Hobart’s Tasman Bridge in January of 1975. This incident
caused the destruction of a section of bridge and the sinking of the
vessel. Jim worked on this project twice, during the early reconstruction and
the subsequent removal of the ship’s bow from the riverbed.
Soon after this project he was able
to fulfil a lifetime ambition to become a diver working in
Australia’s offshore oil and gas industry — a role that he still undertakes to
this day as the operations manager with one of Asia’s largest commercial diving
companies.
During his long and extensive career as a commercial
diver, Jim has undertaken practically every role available within the industry:
air diver, saturation diver, supervisor, diving medical technician and
saturation diving superintendent. Jim’s work has provided him with the
opportunity to work in virtually all of the world’s oilfields including South
East Asia, the Middle East, the subcontinent and the North Sea.
ISBN-10:1-921030-67-4
ISBN-13:978-1-921030-67-3
RRP $29.95
Sid Harta Publishers
Melbourne Australia
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