Interesting logging

ACobra289 · 05-28-2008, 04:34 PM

Saw this on another site. I guess it's real.

On a breezy summer morning Christopher Godsall stands on a steel barge in the middle of Ootsa Lake, deep in the British Columbia wilderness. Suddenly a 60-foot-long black spruce, propelled by a huge black air bag, rockets out of the frigid water, freezes in midair and splashes back into the lake. "I never get bored of this sight," Godsall says.

The fir was cut from the lakebed minutes earlier by a remote-controlled submarine called the Sawfish, the world's first deepwater logger. It can fell 100 underwater trees per shift in Ootsa Lake's submerged forest, flooded half a century ago to build a hydroelectric dam. The lake is one of countless underwater forests around the world, and Godsall, 36, intends to cut down as many of them as he can.

The lakebeds of British Columbia hold 5 billion board feet of quality timber worth $1.2 billion--and Godsall doesn't have to pay any owner for it. He says 100 billion board feet of timber is underwater globally, enough to add 30%to known forests.

His sub design had to be able to clasp a tree, screw in a 500-pound air bag and inflate it. The sub would then cut, release and move on as the fresh cut floated up.