Short Takes

November/December 2007

Lumberjacking the Hard Way: Underwater

Alaskan contractor dives into Panama Canal lakes to lead a $14-million hardwood harvest

By Tom Nicholson

Lakes Gatun and Bayano contain thousands of still-standing trees that offer quality timber submerged for decades and now being brought to the surface. Dozens of species of valuable jungle hardwoods being harvested from within the lakes are saving acres of jungle habitat from being denuded for logging.

Lumberjacks and scuba divers aren’t two occupations typically associated with one another, but on a unique project under way at the Panama Canal, an AGC of Alaska firm is combining the two jobs to accomplish an uncommon mission.

When the Panama Canal was built in 1904, locks and dams constructed as part of the canal project created two large lakes, the 164-sq-mile Lake Gatun and 200-sq-mile Lake Bayano. The lakes submerged thousands of hardwood trees as hundreds of square miles of jungle valleys were flooded. Those trees represent about 400 million board ft of tropical hardwood timber standing in up to 65 ft of water.

That’s where Anchorage-based Gunderboom Inc. comes in. The marine construction firm, which has a wide range of capabilities, last year won a $14-million contract from Panamanian firm Ardan International Group, a vendor representing the Panama Canal Authority, to harvest the submerged timber over the next five years.

The Gunderboom staff of divers is made up largely of Panamanians trained on the job to “fell” the trees with hydraulically operated chainsaws and float them to the surface with airbags, says Gunderboom President Hal Dreyer.

“We started our phase one investigation of the project in January 2006 and now have about 45 people working,” Dreyer says. “As things ramp up over the next few months, we’ll have as many as 400 workers on the project.”

The firm is currently working on designing equipment to mechanize the timber harvesting, in which an operator will use a 65-ft boom attached to a backhoe, floated on a barge, to saw the trees. “We expect to have that in operation in the next six months,” says Dreyer. “But we will never completely do away with the use of divers.”

The murky waters mean obstacles for divers, but Gunderboom has tapped the diving talent of the Kuna Indians, a tribe indigenous to Panama, whose underwater skills are a boon to the project. “They are remarkable free divers,” Dreyer says. “We train them how to saw the trees, but they already have a long tradition of diving in their culture, and they take to the work easily.”

Roger “Red” Kinney, of Gunderboom’s sales department, who recently returned from a month in Panama observing operations, says the Kunas’ skills are “amazing. They can free dive without a tank for up to four minutes at a time.”

Kinney says divers first tether a deflated airbag to the tree trunk, then inflate the bag before sawing it off at the stump, which floats the tree to the surface.

Because of the strength and hardness of the submerged trees, they have withstood rotting, and the timber harvested is as solid and useable as that from trees on land, says Dreyer. The project is an example of how to harvest valuable timber without denuding precious jungle environments.

“For every tree we harvest, that is one less tree that has to be cut down in the forest,” Kinney says.

Lakes Gatun and Bayano, created when the Panama Canal was built, contain thousands of still-standing trees that offer quality timber submerged for decades and now being brought to the surface.