Tag:jungle

Flushing was how we set both the explosives and hydrophones in Brunei. Fairly simpe - just pump a lot of water down the inside of the tube and it washes out the sand up the sides. Turn the tube with some pipe wrenches to prevent the tube from sticking in the hole.

Daily Photo – Flushing

It didn’t take a lot of horsepower to make the holes in which we set the explosives and hydrophones – just a water pump and a couple of guys with pipe wrenches. Water was relatively easy to come by. In most cases the crew only had the dig a sump one or two feet deep and place the filtered end of the inlet hose into the sump.

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Seismic survey line cut through the jungle inland of Seria, Brunei, 1989.

Daily Photo – Jungle Line

After the surveyor cut his line, a ‘bridging crew’ would follow along behind and cut smaller trees to form a walkway, or bridge. Typically three poles wide and nailed together, it made walking the lines considerably easier for the rest of us and in most cases kept our feet dry also. It also meant that relatively few people were actually tromping across the jungle floor.

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A few miles inland from Kuala Belait, Brunei, was a sand quarry in the jungle. This photo quite clearly shows the 3 ~ 4 meter layer of organic material from the jungle overlying a seam of sand that is being quarried for construction needs.

Daily Photo – Jungle Quarry

Most of my LVL work was to determine and map the boundary of the organic material to the first two distinct layers of sand. Consequently, most of my shots would only be sunk a couple of meters into the organic layer. The main crew, however, needed their shots placed down in to the sand – about six meters down.

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