Tec Diving in South America

By Felipe Mongillo, PADI Master Instructor

Chile is a country in South America occupying a long and narrow coastal strip wedged between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. There are a lot of good locations in the coast to make waters sports, including scuba, and increasingly, tec dives. I offer DSAT Tec Deep & DSAT Tec Trimix programs in Chile, and one of my great experiences was to make two tec wreck dives; the “SMS Dresden” to find the ship’s bell and the “Esmeralda” to measure for the Coyahuasi project.

The SMS Dresden bell recovery was in February 2006, in Juan Fernandez island, Chile. The wreck is between 60 m and 75 m, we recovered the bell at 65 m. The dive was made on Trimix open circuit, 4 dives with a 25 min bottom time each. The dives were made successfully with the aid of another trimix diver, Fernando Landeta, and two Chilean Navy divers.

The Esmeralda wreck dives were in November 2008, in Iquique, Chile, at 42 m over five tec dives. The wreck is between 40 and 42 m. The dives were made on open circuit, five dives with 60 min bottom time each. The dives were made successfully with the aid of two other commercial divers. Wrecks are part of the history, but to dive them with techniques and procedures of technical diving allows us to enjoy that history.