Bob Christensen moved to Santa Barbara, California as a young teenager in the summer of 1941 and immediately became enamored with the ocean. He enjoyed swimming and body surfing in the ocean while attending junior and senior high schools in Santa Barbara. After graduation from Santa Barbara High he worked for three years primarily in auto mechanics before attending the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 1953 he graduated from USC with a B.S. degree majoring in Pharmacy.
Immediately after graduation from U.S.C. the military draft prompted Bob to seek the greenest military pastures and he joined the U.S. Navy with an appointment to Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. While at O.C.S., future schools and assignments were explored in depth and Bob applied for Underwater Demolition Training. He reported to UDTRA Class 11 in Coronado, California in April 1954, graduated and was assigned to Underwater Demolition Team Eleven the following July.
At that time, all dive training using breathing apparatus was done in the teams so shortly after joining team 11 Bob was trained in both open and closed circuit scuba. He also took US Navy Second Class Diver training aboard the dive ship USS Coucal while on temporary assignment in WesPac (Japan). Second Class Diver training consisted of air diving to a maximum 150 feet on air using the standard Mark 5 heavy gear. An introduction to shallow water diving gear (Jack Browne) was included.
In 1957, after discharge from active duty, Bob returned to Santa Barbara and a fulltime white-collar job as a pharmacist. He actively pursued sport diving and soon began teaching scuba classes through the local dive shop. He obtained instructor certification from NAUI, YMCA and NASDS.
The offshore oil industry had moved into the Santa Barbara area and was creating a need for commercial divers. In 1960, Bob got a call from a friend in the diving industry seeking a qualified scuba diver to work on an offshore pipeline installation. The pipeline was assembled on shore and was to be pulled off shore to connect with an offshore well head. The diving required was to swim a messenger line from the pulling barge to the beach and then standby to ride the sled on the head end of the pipeline as it was pulled over the nearshore reefs. Regular inspections and reports were made during the pull. This job was the spark that ignited Bob’s desire to become a commercial diver.Although scuba divers had a very poor image in the commercial industry this was Bob’s forte. He survived by diving scuba, tending heavy gear and working in the shop doing gear maintenance.
In 1963 Bob and a crew of four worked on a lengthy diving job bolting split pipe protectors around a transpacific telephone cable near Morro Bay, California. Work was started on the beach wearing only wetsuits, continued through the surf zone using scuba and evolved to using scuba and hookah as the depth increased. As the job was to go to the 80-foot depth, Bob and crew successfully petitioned to use hookah and heavy gear to allow increased bottom times. They assembled a set of heavy gear and proceeded to self-train on the job, diving alternately heavy gear, and hookah. This was well received by the diving crew and work went well.
Since Bob was now a heavy gear diver, he was given a weekend training dive in HeO2 heavy gear from a barge anchored in 240 feet of water off Santa Barbara. This HeO2 heavy gear helmet had a scuba second stage regulator installed between the lower edge of the face port and the top of the neck ring. Dives were started on air on open circuit and switched to demand mode by breathing through the internal regulator mouthpiece when on gas. Communication was accomplished by briefly going off the mouthpiece to talk. This gas-training dive moved Bob onto the list of gas divers.
Shortly after this training dive and while Bob was still working five days a week on the Morro Bay job, he got a weekend callout to fill out a gas diving crew on a drill ship in an emergency. Bob was to be the third diver. He would dress in and stand-by with no expectation of getting in the water. The underwater task was to repair a broken hydraulic pipe on a riser at 360-foot depth. The first two divers made good progress but did not quite complete the job so Bob’s first working gas dive was to complete cutting a thread on the pipe, screwing on a quick connect fitting and snapping on a hydraulic hose. This was carried off successfully and the number three diver was solidly on the gas diver list.
In 1965 working with Ocean Systems, Bob was an experimental subject during the development of HeO2 decompression tables at the Linde Laboratory in Tonawanda, New York. In this capacity he made several bounce dives in a compression chamber up to 600 feet. A final saturation dive to 650 feet culminated this series of tests.
September 1965 saw the completion of the test dives and a call to work in the Cook Inlet of Alaska on a pipeline laying operation. Bob liked Alaska and worked there seasonally for several years.
In 1969 Santa Barbara City College was starting the second year of the 2 year long Marine Diving Technician Program and Bob was invited to apply as an instructor. He ultimately taught in this program for 16 years, retiring in 1985. One of the many highpoints in Bob’s activities at City College was meeting and working with the author of this book, Steve Barsky. Steve was an inspired student, a very hard driver and best of all has become a long time good friend.
After a few years enjoying a variety of activities in retirement, Bob started working part time with Kirby Morgan Diving Systems, Inc.. He has worked in several capacities there over the past 14 years and is still associated with them.
