Underwater harvest

[Guy Meilleur]

Triton Logging has made the Sawfish, a tool that goes down into flooded forest and cuts trees and pulls them up. It'll go down 700feet. Not that many of you terrestrial types might care; I just thought it was a really cool thing.

 

[jimmyq]

interesting. maybe this is a trade for loggers/arborists that are deathly afraid of heights?

 

[rumination]

I just checked out their website.

http://www.tritonlogging.com/index.html

Underwater logging is a very cool idea.

 

[jimmyq]

geez, they are only a 20 minute drive, hour and a half ferry boat and 10 minute drive from me... bout 70 miles as the crow flies I think.. looks pretty cool.

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Found the article in Audubon magazine. A great organization, activist philosophy, smart writing in their mag. Even if you hate birds you gotta love em.

 

[jimmyq]

Guy... arent you up a bit late?

 

[Reed]

It makes me wonder why they didn't salvage Lois Lake while the dam was being built?

 

[arboromega]

that is visionary. what a cool piece of equipment

 

[wiley_p]

I've known that underwater cutting was going on in South America and here in PNW but only with divers, never thought they would mechanize it. So now the same rich SOB's that flooded the canyon can now turn a profit with the high grade submerged wood. How fun would a timber cruise at 80' underwater be?

 

[LogRite]

That looks like a cool way to earn a living!

 

[Ryan Willock]

Looks neat but I think I'll stick to my mountain logging

 

[MasterBlaster]

Originally posted by wiley_p
How fun would a timber cruise at 80' underwater be?

Fun as as all get-out!!!

Sign me up!

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Actually they're using one in panama to harvest the trees flooded when they built that canal, when, 100 yrs ago?

 

[NeTree]

I remember a special on TLC a few years ago about a guy who dives for forgotten timber in the great lakes, and makes a killing doing it.

Fiddleback maple fetching $20k plus per log...

YEE-HAW!

 

[Tom Dunlap]

From the website:

"...to begin supplying a branded eco-friendly line of certified forest products."

I find a bit of irony to think that trees that were flooded to make a reservoir are considered "eco-friendly" That's pretty good wordsmithing by the marketing department

Before I get blamed for hijacking or railing about logging, that's not my point. It seems like a great idea. Save the timber instead of doing, probably, more damage on surface logging. I don't mean for this to be a critique of logging.

I'd like to see a CGI of how the process works. My imagination tells me that they lower the submerged feller. It grabs the stem with the grapple, attaches a balloon and they bar cuts the stump. Let the balloon raise the tree and it becomes a log. Do you think that they can let the slash fall back into the reservoir? Since this is a man-made environment and the trees have been there for sixty years it really isn't "pollution" until the reservoir is drained. If the slash sinks it sure would make the fire hazard low

Tom

 

[Jacob J.]

The logging of submerged trees in Brazil was done by divers until too many of them were getting killed, plus boats were getting sank. The divers would go down with hydraulic saws and cut the trees off, and the trees would rocket to the surface, and smash the boat to smithereens. Now they use a hydraulic arm with a mechanical hydraulic cut-off saw like a feller-buncher has. The arm is mounted on a large trawler and there's an additional attachment that holds the tree in place while it is being cut.

In Brazil this logging has proven to be quite lucrative, since the hardwoods are preserved quite well even after having been submerged for 20+ years. Sort of like the guys in California who dive down and retrieve submerged Redwood and Sequoia logs.

 

[Timberjackboy]

Eastern hardwoods

In East grand lake which is owned by half by the UNIted States and Half by Canada there are submerged eastern Hardwoods. These trees are thousands of years old. They were submerged when the lake was formed thousands of years a go. I suspect these predessorer species of todays hardwoods would be worth a great deal of money to a mill and craftsmen a like. Maybe somday the ancient underwater forset will be harvested, but until it is East grand will continue to be part forest.

 

[Jumper]

There are a couple of diving/logging companies currently working in the Ottawa River harvesting logs, mainly pine, that sank from log booms in some cases over 100 years ago. Apparently it is very high quality timber.

 

[Al Smith]

Timless timber

As the story goes,a certain scuba diver/ fortune hunter,was doing some recreational diving ,near the site of his parents summer cabin,on the shore of lake superior.During a series of dives,he noted thousands of logs,and cants,that apparently had sank during the era of great lakes logging,perhaps the 1890's.He retrieved a few,and after testing,discovered they were in a perfect preserved state,and highly usable.as an added boon,these were "old growth",20 to 50 rings per inch,probabley only seen in Nathional parks,nowadays.After several years of litigation,he was allowed to retrieve them,for sale.They discovered musical intrument grade fiddle back and birds eye hard maple,that had a tone quality equal to that used by Stradivarius[ no kidding] The discovery channel showed them cutting a log with a band saw that fetched over $40 G's .The web site,is timelees timber and I think,Superior lumber,very interesting idea.