I was intrigued by a recent email from Nhat (Jay) Chu, who wrote:

There’s no greater frontier than the depths of the abyss. There’s still so much unexplored. And I always look back to the men and women whose courage to plunge into the unknown has inspired my generation to a career of adventure.

My story is rather uneventful. There isn’t any chapter of greatness or drama of any kind.
I’m a young ROV pilot tech that is still learning the ropes. Only, ROVs didn’t come to me by fate or chance of any kind. I could have worked a steady 9-to-5 desk job in the heat of Singapore’s financial but, but I blame my dad for all those adrenaline-filled stories about voyages he had in the 1980s. Mind you, Vietnam in the 1980s was a war-torn country. Food was rationed (1 kg of meat/month/family), and we didn’t have the friendliest of neighbours—big brother China and Khmer Rouge at that time. So my dad would embark on voyages to far-flung places like North Korean, PNG and Cuba to bring back much-needed goods for the motherland.

I too on studies of Marine Offshore and Mechatronics while working as a broker in Singapore. After I completed my studies in 2019, I went back to Vietnam to work as a ROV trainee for the oil & gas industry. The systems I worked with were SMD’s Quantum ROV.

As for Canada, it didn’t happen by chance either. In 2017, I applied for Permanent Residence since 2017. And the pandemic couldn’t stop me from moving here. I’m proud to call Vancouver, the cradle of the subsea industry, my home.

Currently, I’m on the lookout for my first ROV assignment in Canada. My email is jaychu.ndn@gmail.com. I’m looking for every opportunity to get to know folks from the industry. I’d like to know what challenges the Canadian subsea industry is facing and what the industry is doing to prepare for these challenges.

Regards, Jay