Quest For Sunken Warships
It’s not too often that a single dynamic project comes together to fill your summer dive season with astonishing dives, remarkable people and fantastic journeys. Yet that is just what happened to me in the summer 0f 2007. by David Ulloa
It all started last year when veteran wreck diver and underwater cameraman Dan Crowell invited me to join his specialized, hand-picked dive team to shoot a television program he was producing for KPI and the Discovery Networks’ Military Channel.
The “Quest For Sunken Warships” is a four-part special series that follows Dan and a dive team consisting of Becky Kagan, me, and a group of highly trained support divers as we sift through the wreckage of war vessels now resting in their watery graves from New Jersey to the Truk Lagoon. The show’s objective was to document the fading history of these powerful icons of war before our oceans wash them away.
Divers Dan Crowell, David Ulloa and Becky Kagan (L to R), the dive team for the Quest For Sunken Warships program.
We dedicated ourselves and put everything we had into shooting the special series, and I’m excited to report that “Quest For Sunken Warships” is now airing on The Military Channel!
Contributing to this series ended up becoming an incredible journey for me. I’ve met and dived with some of the best divers in the world and gone down on a number or highly sought after and fascinating wrecks, including German U-boats, Japanese supply ships, a U. S. Navy aircraft carrier, and the bow section of a highly decorated American World War II destroyer! What a story and dive that was! As it stands now, the four episodes are titled: Torpedo Alley, Operation Hailstone, USS Oriskany, and Collision Eminent.
In shooting the "Quest For Sunken Warships," our team swam in everything from the cold shark-infested waters of the Atlantic seaboard to the warm tropical waters of the central Pacific. We battled the strongest ocean current that I have ever encountered, and dived to depths exceeding 250 feet of sea water to bring home the most visually stunning high definition underwater footage that I have ever been a part of producing.
Dan, Becky, and David shooting alongside the I-169 Japanese Submarine in Truk Lagoon. (Roy Knecht)
What a marvelous treat the viewer is going to have watching this one! I am deeply honored to have had the opportunity to participate in making this series, and trust that ratings for the program will allow us to bring you more content like this in the future!!
I want to thank everybody that assisted and supported us while shooting “Quest For Sunken Warships”; I hope all of you have as much fun watching it as we had making it!!
So for now, it’s back into the caves for me as I have several other projects to get busy with, but more on those later.
All the best!
~ David
Gas mask stuck on stand of rifles in a cargo hold aboard the Fujikawa Maru. (Roy Knecht)
For further information on the special series and airdates, go to:
