FCE Interview 29
FCE Interview 29
FCE Interview 29
1. Ray
o is looking for a ship that sank a hundred and fifty years ago
6. The SS Union
8. My name’s Ray Garrett, and I’m a professional deep-sea diver. Let me explain
how I came to be working in this profession. When I left school, I got a job in a
lawyer’s office, and by the time I was 2, I’d worked my way up to the position
of office manager. I was good at my job, and it never occurred to me to leave or
do something else.
9. When our company was bought out and the local office closed. I started
thinking about other jobs. I’d always been interested in scuba diving, as a
hobby, and just about that time, I saw an advert in a magazine. A company was
looking for people to train as divers, so I put my name down for the training.
My mother wasn’t at all keen; in fact, she and my dad didn’t believe I’d last out
the three months’ training! Scuba diving doesn’t take great physical strength or
unusual exercise tolerance. All it takes is the desire, plus some basic classroom
and in-water training.
10.A qualified diver can safely remain underwater for anywhere from a few
minutes to over two hours. Most of the work I do now isn’t very dangerous – or
very exciting! My job involves working on ships that have to be repaired. so
we’re not even very deep underwater.
12.At the moment we’re doing quite an exciting job: looking for buried treasure!
Well,I suppose it’s not exactly like that. We’re working off the coast of
America. examining a ship on the sea bed that sank almost a hundred and fifty
years ago. The ship is the SS Union, and she was travelling from the Northern
States of America to the South just after the American Civil War. For a long
time, nobody knew where the shipwreck was, but a team from the University of
New Orleans found it last year, using some new sonar equipment. The ship is
supposed to have a lot of gold on board – although we haven’t actually found
any yet.
13. Working on a shipwreck sounds absolutely fascinating, but it can be extremely
dangerous at the same time. Potential hazards of diving at such depth include
de-compression sickness,air embolism, hypothermia and physical exhaustion.
On top of that. the ship can break up at any time, which means that you run the
risk of being trapped. A couple of days ago I had a lucky escape when part of
the shipwreck fell, and that’s the sort of thing that can really cause problems for
divers. Still, it’s a great profession.