What no one tells you before you become a deep sea diver | Hacker News Reader

What no one tells you before you become a deep sea diver

telegraph.co.uk

63 pointscharlieirish16 comments

I used to work as a deep sea saturation diver with various companies in South East Asia. Mostly based out of Singapore and jobs in the South China Sea but also Japan, Indonesia, etc.

Almost accurate description of what live is like as a deep sea diver. Though they don't live "down there" in tiny decompression chambers as the article claims. The chambers are on the surface (on-board a rig, a ship etc).

> Though they don't live "down there" in tiny decompression chambers as the article claims. The chambers are on the surface (on-board a rig, a ship etc).

I had never heard of this before; that sounds like a lot of uncomfortable strictures to follow for a long time! The Wikipedia article on saturation diving says that underwater living chambers are also an option, but seems to suggest that they're mainly used by scientific research divers (I'm not sure why that would be).

these underwater chambers have been used in the 70ies 80ies afaik. but I personally have never seen one nor heard of anyone who had the opportunity to work in one (and most of the guys out there were in the early 50ies while I was very young in comparison). Not saying they didn't exist but their use was limited. Because "wet welding" or any type of work that requires a mechanical engineering effort carried out by a diver is usually not as solid/sound as welding the parts on the surface (out of the water). The welding seam produced by a diver is usually of lower quality (even if the diver is really well trained in welding impurities of the water are reducing the quality of the weld). Also many places where one would have to wet-weld it is too deep (even for sat-diving), so they would use ROV's anyway. There has to be a very special reason why one would have a team of divers do all this at the depth. Certainly not in the oil/gas industry.

EDIT: clarification, I mention welding because welding/cutting (e.g. an oil pipeline) was usually a scenario where one would create such chambers at subsea level in order to isolate the under water part of the pipe in a dry "bubble" within this structure to repair it.

> * isolate the under water part of the pipe in a dry "bubble" within this structure to repair it*

Is that even possible? How would one isolate big pipe under such great pressures?

The golden gate bridge and many others were built by working in dry "bubbles". An inverted dome on the sea floor was filled with air so the workers could work on the seafloor pretty much the same as on the ground outside. I don't know how they worked under that air pressure. I guess they had to decompress like any diver.

it is possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbaric_welding

there are many reason one might want to consider it but usually it is easier to do a quick fix with a wet weld and then plan on a bigger project to get the structure out of the water. only when this is too costly or impossible would they do a hyperbaric weld.

also the idea that you can go to the surface and follow your bubbles during a saturation diving job isn't correct. You'd die from the bends before even reaching the surface. Decompression from a sat dive usually takes couple of days and is done in the sat chambers (which are as mentioned a fixed (welded down) installation on the ship/rig).

Didn't he mean that you'd only attempt this if the air suddenly ran out or there was some pressing emergency that would prevent a controlled ascent (serious failure of the dive chamber perhaps)?

1. In case of emergency, always follow the bubbles

The only problem with the slow ascent mantra is when the air runs out while you're underwater. You hear a click as something shuts behind your head signaling there’s no more air available and then you try your very hardest not to panic. Human instinct tells you to get to the surface as quick as possible – but that could result in a bad case of The Bends.

The golden rule is to follow the bubbles.

So you'd hope that by the time you reach the surface your support crew would get you back under pressure again to dissolve gas bubbles back into your body fluids, and hopefully you survive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin

If there is a accident, it will be over quick.

If there ever is a mars colony, this is what is its going to look like.

Except that going from 9 atmospheres to 1 is way more dramatic than from ~1 to ~0.

here is a nice explanation of what deep sea sat diving is about. http://www.slideshare.net/KevinDuck/simple-30154573

Ever since hearing about the Byford Dolphin accident, deep sea diving has always had a special place of respect in my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_acc...

Sounds like a pretty hard job... How much a deep sea diver makes?

From the article : "Saturation divers are incredibly well paid (around £1,500 per day), but the risk they are exposed to reflects the rationale behind the pay structure."

To put that in context it's in the same range, maybe even less, of a decent contract programmer/consultant billing $150 - $200 USD per hour.

From the article:

"Saturation divers are incredibly well paid (around £1,500 per day)"

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