Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice | Premiering Friday, Aug 24, 2012 at 9PM e/p on Discov

[jcazgoldchaser]

Looks like a better idea than trying to deal with waves.

 

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[jcazgoldchaser]

My god that was a bad series. They just came off the ice tonight.

I doubt if you edited all the footage that you would have 5 minutes of mining.

 

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[CharlesP]

I haven't watched the last one yet. But from the commercial I would assume it goes something like this. Oh my God we got to get off the ice, oh the ice is melting cause of global warming. If we don't get off the ice we could die, and lose all are money. Oh we got off the ice. The end.

 

[jeff of pa]

first off I hate the cold too much to ever want to be there.
and my phobia of walking on ice is my only fear I will never challenge,
(I fear heights, but have climbed to the top of a tower & hung upside down from a rusty railing to fight it)
I won't walk on ice ever again, just to fight that fear ! unless "maybe" the ice is an indoors skating rink
and froze to the ground. I don't even like to step on ice on my pavement, till the salt melts it.

anyway, isn't that the u.s. ? Aren't they regulated out the grand-wazoo by osha & all the other wanna be nanny's ?

my hunch is the ice would have held them for a month yet, but they were ordered by the "mommy's"
of the country, to go, & all the fear talk was for drama.

am I wrong ?

 

[blynch35]

i hate it when they do that i just want to see them mining with maybe a little drama not alot of drama and a little mining it is a gold show after all...

 

[Hoser John]

I LOVED IT--when the small op financed by a group of determined individuals pulls off such a righteous haul in such a amazing short season. My creed exactly,lean,mean,small and quiet and good to go for $160,000 in righteous oro puro. Nuttn' but respect to the miners and incidently the show,I know tooo much drama BUT also a huge chunk of reality and danger beyond comprehension-kudos-John

 

[calisdad]

Same here, lots of needless drama but tons of respect for those who just get after it (the gold). I know they aren't that deep but they do stay down quite some time. Didn't they say 4 hours. If they had to surface too fast from much of a depth wouldn't they be in a world of hurt?

 

[kuger]

Calidad.....yes,you can experience issues at less than 20'.When Zekes belt came off you seen how fast he popped up....could have been bad.Just a few years back I was working a DEEP hole,over 20'.....all of a sudden,I felt myself "get light",and off I went!My buckle on my weight belt broke,there was nothing I could do.I felt one ear drum pop and when I came to the surface my box tender freaked when he looked at me.....my nose was bleeding,as were my ears....scared him worse than me.Off to the hospital!Was a touchy 24 hrs....needless to say.An embolism can form and you will never know it,then bang your dead.I went to suspender type weight belts after that and pay closer attention to trying to keep one hand on something...hose,rock,etc,so in the event something like that were to happen again at least your prepared and could maybe regulate your ascent

 

[Gravel Hog]

I LOVED IT--when the small op financed by a group of determined individuals pulls off such a righteous haul in such a amazing short season. My creed exactly,lean,mean,small and quiet and good to go for $180,000 in righteous oro puro. Nuttn' but respect to the miners and incidently the show,I know tooo much drama BUT also a huge chunk of reality and danger beyond comprehension-kudos-John

Yep! Right on for the Lazy Gator Crew! Go figure, all that gold off the east tract Nome beach public mining area. (Why Lease)
Who's ready to go get some. I don't know looks too short of a season but good supplement for the yearly take.
Wonder what Discovery Channel will put in the TV slot for this series now that it is over? Gold Rush AK? Cal Black Op Dredging?
Kuger, very good point to those who haven't experienced. I don't care for deep dredging anymore plenty of gold at the 6-8' depth or less.

Nothing beats working 6' troughways in 50 degree crystal clear water with plenty of bright warm sun to light the way. (Days gone by, long by)

 

[kuger]

I cant say I dont like them deep holes,as there has been several that treated me VERY well.....very well,but it is a different world from belly dredging,dark..dark...use of head lamps,which really can get eerie,one must be overly cautious of "wall hanging",boulders.I do miss those though,it seems more quiet,and you feel like you are working in places no man ever has before....they are expedentially more dangerous though

 

[Hoser John]

Depth has never bothered me,but had pins/needles once and just went back down immediately to the 15' level for a half hour or so and good to go. By myself with a 1,600' vertical climb,22 miles to town was not a good scenario but gold gold gold by the pound smoothes over the ungodly danger and work-Now cold makes me feel old but 50 degree is righteous,sure miss the upper reaches of the sacramento river,65 degree,water clarity at 50'-75' across like glass,sooo warm in the mid/late summer all ya needed was a farmer john bottom and GOLD sure was pretty-in days of old when miners were bold and didn't do what they were told-John-

 

[thegoldgopher]

Same here, lots of needless drama but tons of respect for those who just get after it (the gold). I know they aren't that deep but they do stay down quite some time. Didn't they say 4 hours. If they had to surface too fast from much of a depth wouldn't they be in a world of hurt?

I am a former scuba diver, and was a hard hat diver for six years. I was a medically certified hyperbaric chamber operator. I know of which I speak.

You are asking questions that have to do with different things. There are several things that can get you in trouble in diving. One of them is decompression, or the bends. Was first diagnosed during the building of the Brooklyn bridge by caisson workers who worked under pressure in the underwater caissons. Also called caisson's disease. Gases go into the blood, and when you come up, they come out of the blood in a predictable way depending on how long and how deep you dove.

There are no decompression limits, which is the point after which you need to decompress. It is based on bottom time and depth of dive. For 35' of water, a diver can spend 310 minutes according to the US Navy no decompression chart before needing to decompress. What that means is that rarely do any divers in the Nome area run into decompression problems unless they dive in water deeper than 33 feet. After that, all sorts of things can happen, and it gets complicated, but for the purpose of this discussion, we will not go there, because it is not relevant.

The other thing is simple expansion of air. If you fill a balloon underwater at 33', seal it, and let it go, it will expand exactly twice in volume when it reaches the surface. All bubbles grow as they rise. Holding one's breath after taking in ANY air underwater puts one in danger of air embolism. If you only have the air you take in on surface, as the one guy who filled his lungs, then free dove to get their gear back, he had no danger of embolizing because he only had as much air as his lungs would hold at surface pressure. It's called free diving, and the record is very deep, 300' or deeper, using weights, and lifting balloons, but no risk of embolism, because the diver can only take on as much air as his lungs can hold at the surface, not enough to expand and burst. Zeke, on the other hand, took in air underwater, then shot to the surface. What happens is that the air can overexpand, and go directly into the blood stream as big bubbles, killing you instantly. Zeke was at a lesser risk because his rig was out of air, so he probably didn't have an excess of air in his lungs enough to explode them. Or he exhaled coming up.

If you were sit on bottom in the three or four foot deep end of a swimming pool, fill your lungs with air from a scuba tank, hold your breath, and then shoot to the surface, you can embolize, and the air will go through your lung tissue into your blood instead of coming out your mouth. You would die if not put into a hyerbaric chamber within a couple of minutes.

Part of diving training is doing a "blow and go" from 33'. You are in full scuba gear at 33'. You take a breath of air. You remove your regulator, and head for the surface, exhaling the whole time. You never hold your breath during the ascent. There is no desire to inhale, as the air in your lungs is expanding as you come up, and you are just letting it out your nose and mouth. The problems come when one holds their breath.

If you ever take scuba lessons, probably the first thing they tell you is NEVER HOLD YOUR BREATH.

The Nome divers haven't run into much problems yet because they are staying well within the no decompression limits, so no bends, or need for hyperbaric chambers on site. I don't know about the barges that are running in waters deeper than 33'. When I was a commercial diver, we took a decompression chamber with us on dives in water of ten feet deep. That was so that if we embolized by holding our breath, we would have some slight chance of survival. I don't know if it was USCG required, and I wonder when USCG and OSHA will enter this cluster polka, probably after a few fatalities. We shall see as the circus goes on, and these inexperienced divers spend more time in the water if any of them run into embolism problems from breath holding, but as far as popping up from shallow depths, they have no problems from decompression bends. Just embolizing.

Hope this helps you to understand.

 

[thegoldgopher]

They spend too much time on the drama. We get the point and most of us here on Tnet understand the dredge operation. The audience, for the most of them, do not. I don't always think they are honest about the totals they have and I it seems to me that some gold is put under the table. IMO

Eureka!!

No self-respecting gold miner I know would do such a thing!

hehe

 

[thegoldgopher]

Calidad.....yes,you can experience issues at less than 20'.When Zekes belt came off you seen how fast he popped up....could have been bad.Just a few years back I was working a DEEP hole,over 20'.....all of a sudden,I felt myself "get light",and off I went!My buckle on my weight belt broke,there was nothing I could do.I felt one ear drum pop and when I came to the surface my box tender freaked when he looked at me.....my nose was bleeding,as were my ears....scared him worse than me.Off to the hospital!Was a touchy 24 hrs....needless to say.An embolism can form and you will never know it,then bang your dead.I went to suspender type weight belts after that and pay closer attention to trying to keep one hand on something...hose,rock,etc,so in the event something like that were to happen again at least your prepared and could maybe regulate your ascent

"Blowups" used to be a big deal when they one piece suits that you got into through the neck hole, like the old Navy Mk V. The only place for air to come out was around the neck. The feet were sealed. If a diver ever got upside down, they could shoot to the surface, with no control, and the suit or seal would usually rupture, so that if the tending team was not attentive, he would head right back to the bottom. And if the air popped off, the sudden loss of pressure would push him into his helmet. This was thought of to be a wive's tale, but Myth Busters did a thing on it using a pig, and they actually did get the whole pig in the helmet. That old helmet diving with the big lead shoes was something. The diving school I went to had a Navy MkV. They let each of us dive it once in the pool to have a comparison of the old gear to the new stuff. A guy had to be one bad hombre to just get all suited up, lead shoes and all, and walk over to the edge and jump in. Climbing the ladder was something else. That same suit is probably worth upwards of $10k right now, but I heard someone stole it.