Off Cal Poly’s Avila Beach pier, faint splashes and bubbles emerged at the surface as Santa Barbara City College students worked below.
On April 30 and May 1, small groups of student divers performed a mock inspection of the pier’s underwater infrastructure as part of the Santa Barbara City College, or SBCC, underwater tools and inspection class. Students conducted marine growth surveys and inspections of debris or damage to the structure.
The class and training are led by SBCC alumna and trained commercial diver Emma Horanic, who is the director of Marine Diving Technology at SBCC.
“We get to help Cal Poly out by doing an inspection on some of their anchor towers. It’s not an official inspection, because we’re all learning, but it’s still data collected, and that’s knowledge that [the university] can then use to make decisions on,” Horanic said.
Student divers were performing 30-minute dives, and depending on the tide, swimming around 30 to 45 feet underwater.
Cal Poly’s pier was used for training since it replicates the structure of offshore oil platforms, as it was originally used to transport oil in the early 1900s, according to Cal Poly’s Center for Coastal Marine Sciences. According to Horanic, the pier’s infrastructure is unique in comparison to other piers on the California coast that are typically constructed out of wooden materials.
“Getting this hands-on experience, and having these structures here is invaluable. All the terminology, the types of inspections we do and the procedures are all parallel to what they would actually do in the field,” Horanic said.
According to Horanic, for students pursuing commercial diving, underwater construction and underwater welding are the most common paths chosen. Six schools in the United States offer commercial diving training, and SBCC is one of the two community colleges that offer the program.
SBCC gives students the option to obtain their vocational certification and go directly into the workforce after two semesters, or they can remain one additional year and complete additional general education and specialized courses to receive their associate’s degree in marine diving technology.
Javan Weathers, a SBCC student in the underwater tools and inspection class, has plans to transfer to Cal Poly Maritime Academy to finish his schooling to become a Naval third assistant engineer.
“I think it’s super useful. With marine diving, you learn a lot to work with your hands, which is something I hadn’t done before, so I think that experience is super valuable,” Weathers said.