Two weeks of sifting through the sunken vessel MV St. Thomas Aquinas to find and retrieve the remains of victims of the Aug. 16 sea tragedy highlighted the need for Cebu to train its own crew of technical divers.
“We lack technical divers who could have helped us in the retrieval operation here,” said
Gerry Reyes, 59, a marine biologist who serves as the leader of civilian technical divers who volunteered to help navy and coast guard frogmen in the ongoing search and retrieval operations.
Reyes, a top-ranked officer of the Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary (PCGA), was also among the divers who searched for and recovered the remains of Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo as well as the pilots of the ill-fated Piper Seneca aircraft that crashed in the waters off Masbate province last year.
He said the navy and the coast guard have only about a dozen trained technical divers.
“I hope they could train more technical divers. We are here to help, but since we’re an archipelago and Cebu is a shipping hub, I hope the authorities would realize the need to have more trained people and equipment,” Reyes said.
Own equipment
Reyes said they had to bring their own equipment from Manila for the search and retrieval operation for the passengers of the vessel which collided with the Sulpicio Express Siete off Lauis Ledge in Talisay City last Aug. 16.
He then led CDN to the aft portion of the San Juan and showed a machine which he said they had to fly in to Cebu via an air force C-130 aircraft.
“We thought we could get the equipment we need here considering that Cebu is a top diving destination then we realized that most of the divers here are recreational divers and only a few are technical divers,” he told Cebu Daily News aboard the Philippine Coast Guard’s BRP San Juan.
He said 2Go Shipping, which owns the Aquinas, provided the divers with just seven instead of 10 oxygen tanks which would have afforded divers to make two dives a day.
The divers don’t get any compensation except for free meals for their efforts, but Reyes said it’s not an issue.
“This is the humanitarian side of me and this is my way of helping those grieving families,” he said.
Humanitarian
He said he left his home in North Fairview in Quezon City at 1 a.m. of Aug. 17 to catch the earliest flight to Cebu so he could join the divers in the search.
“My wife didn’t know that I was coming here in Cebu until I called her. We are here to volunteer and to help these families. It is not easy for them especially those families whose loved ones weren’t found yet,” he said.
Reyes said while he had been diving for 30 years, he still feels nervous every time there is an undersea search operation.
“I’m just confident that my diving buddy, Alex Santos, is here. If he’s with me, I’m assured that things will be fine,” he said.
Among the risks divers face in the Cebu operations are the flotsam and the oil spill, Reyes said.
“We need to wash our diving outfits thoroughly since the oil could cause infections and other illnesses,” Reyes said.
He said divers are also wary about decompression or “the bends” which they may experience after diving deep into the waters.
While the coast guard’s search and rescue vessels like the San Juan are equipped with decompression chambers to treat divers experiencing decompression sickness, Reyes said they need dive computers to help them in their dives. /Michelle Joy L. Padayhag, Correspondent