Water Logging with the Sawfish

IT'S rare that the origins of newly milled 2-by-4s offer a compelling tale. But the boards, beams and planks that Triton Logging Inc. sells to home builders come from the cold, eerie depths of Canadian reservoirs. There, a remote-controlled chainsaw-wielding submarine called a Sawfish, developed by Triton's founder and chief executive, Chris Godsall, harvests trees killed by 20th century dam projects. Although the robotic lumberjack may conjure images of Jules Verne's primitive Nautilus, its mission is to dive 200 feet down in search of new sources of cedar, pine, spruce and Douglas fir.

The pilot sits in a barge on the surface, scanning multiple video screens to navigate the underwater landscape, a dark, surreal scene in which submerged trees look as though they've been frozen in time with bark and pine cones intact. Using a joystick, the Sawfish operator ties a canvas float to each tree, the saw cuts through its base and the tree rockets to the surface.
The wood has been preserved by the dark, oxygen-poor water, and once it is kiln-dried, it can be used as architectural-grade, old-growth lumber for purposes including support beams and custom cabinetry. Triton, a small Canadian company based near Victoria, British Columbia, has offered its lumber to builders mainly on a limited, custom-order basis and has had trouble meeting the growing demand for its products in Canada and the U.S. Much of what they produce has been used for Canadian green-building projects, though some has been making its way to construction projects in Southern California.

Since 2004, Triton has harvested trees from two reservoirs in British Columbia, Ootsa Lake and Lois Lake. But with an aggressive plan to build a school of Sawfish and expand production, and with 45,000 untapped submerged forests in the world, Godsall intends to distribute wood products to the public through the company's website at http://www.tritonlogging.com within a year. In five years, he hopes to be operating on five continents.