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The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agobeen there. done that :) not as dangerous as the article says. at least not the diving part. most of the injuries are people mishandling high-pressure systems (valves, plumbing), electrical hazards (water+electricity), gas leaks, burns ... basically anything that can go wrong on construction sites, but only you're out at sea exposed to the elements. those few times that accidents do happen with divers in a saturation chambers / diving bell (aka "in the bin") it's cited for decades. people are naturally scared of darkness, deep water. so when accidents do happen it makes for a gripping story told over and over. how else to pass time when you're waiting on the weather to get better on a rocky boat. what's pretty cool is the survival training, e.g. practice escaping from a sinking helicopter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Z8sGRje90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Z8sGRje90 I have seen big tough man in their 40ies panic and in tears trying to stay calm while the sinking helicopter fully floods, and you can't open the doors until the cabin is fully flooded. Another good one: part of the course is simulation of a burning rig. they lock you into a warehouse heated to around 60-70°C breathing air with a gas-mask, full body safety clothes (the heat alone can make you panic), then you have to navigate through a metal maze with a buddy (you're linked to your sobbing partner over radio-comms), and it's pitch black. You are only allowed to get out together and if one of you it bucks up you start over. Fantastic character building and understanding your mental limits. Sometimes I sit in front of my code thinking why did I get out of this job. I fought so hard to get there and gave it all up for computers & code. The truth is that most of the time offshore life is quite boring. Guess my boredom with software made me go into IoT since I get to mess with physical systems again.
- japhyr 8y agoThis article was fascinating. It never mentioned pay, though. Do these people get paid really well after all this specialized training, and commitment?
- piker 8y ago> They needed his salary (not surprisingly, saturation divers are well-compensated, up to $1,400 per day), so his wife told him to finish the job.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agoI see from the article that salaries haven't changed much since the 90ies.
- gaius 8y agoYeah - phenomenal money in the 90s and everyone wore a Rolex... now the money is pretty decent while working but big gaps between jobs
- fjsolwmv 8y agoGreat money but assuming that's not a 250+ day/yr billable utilization it's not substantially better than working for a major webtech company, and a lot more grueling and dangerous.
- Retric 8y agoThe population is tiny which means even if the accident rate is low per time, the risk per diver is extremely high. It depends on you benchmark, but people think of police officer as a dangerous job and they mostly die in car accidents.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agoyou're right of course. location also matters, e.g. it's far more dangerous in the Gulf of Mexico where you work with horrible equipment in an extremely deep location and little oversight. my point though was that it is dangerous but not for the reasons given. I have seen horrible accidents but none of them were under water or in decompression.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoIsn't there something about how general aviation pilots mostly die flying if they don't retire from it young?
- toomanybeersies 8y agoThere are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. That's the saying anyway.
- yardie 8y agoI have a friend who works in the North Sea and I envy his life. We met and sailed the Mediterranean together. I took 2 years off to go sailing full time while he managed to work it into his schedule. He is 3 on, 2 off or 2 on, 3 off the rig. While I’m back in the office he can continue to sail indefinitely. You can accomplish so much with a job that gives you plenty of time off every month.
- GordonS 8y agoIt's not so romantic if you have a family - and from the other side, as a kid, it wasn't nice for us having my dad away for weeks at a time.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThe tragic longing is part of the romance.
- yardie 8y agoIt appears to be well paid. And as a kid that grew up poor if the choice was 3 weeks of parental non contact or mayonnaise sandwiches for dinner, well see you in a few weeks, mom!
- vertex-four 8y agoThere's a lot of training involved in going offshore, and if you're able to go through training to get out of poverty, there's a hundred other careers to go for that don't involve multiple weeks away from family.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoIs it important for families to be together 7 days a week?
- mbrameld 8y agoThis feel like the setup for a false dichotomy...
- kk58 8y agoWhat were you doing offshore? Commissioning for topsides is it? How did you pivot from field to coding job?
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agoI was a Commercial Diver moving into Life Support Technician/ Superviser work. Then got a lot of free time (the mentioned boredom) so started getting into Linux, Scripting, C, ... then wrote a program that would implement the Oceaneering Manual in code (how much gas do you need for a 30 day job with 6 divers in a chamber, how much soda for the CO2 scrubbers, if they work on 500 ft and live at 470 ft and you do X number of bell-runs) then spent more time and had more fun implementing this than doing the actual LST work. I also worked a lot together with the ROV operators (who aren't just operating them but the good ones are building them from scratch), and these guys were a real inspiration. I could have chosen ROV's but it what I wanted to get away from was my future life at sea. nuff said I ended up finding a job back on land as a software engineer and now had time to take evening courses and get deeper into CompSci
- fjsolwmv 8y agoYou're in good company. Linus Torvalds wrote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsurface_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsurface_(software)
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agoLMAO I had no idea. Thanks for this :D
- salvar 8y ago> basically anything that can go wrong on construction sites, but only you're out at sea exposed to the elements Sounds... dangerous.
- FabHK 8y agoThe decompression accident alluded to in the piece was the Byford Dolphin diving bell accident. The wikipedia description [1] contains this rather graphic paragraph: > [...] Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the 60 centimetres (24 in) diameter opening created by the jammed interior trunk door by escaping air and violently dismembered, including bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which further resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section later being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin
- jdietrich 8y agoSimilar accidents happen in the water. Pressure differentials are a constant threat in commercial diving operations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEtbFm_CjE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEtbFm_CjE0
- userbinator 8y agoThat accident involved a pressure difference of 8 atmospheres. For comparison, when a plane explosively decompresses, the pressure difference is much less than 1 atmosphere, and that is enough to cause some pretty severe damage, so you can imagine just how much more violent an 8atm decompression is.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoGoodwin's law of pressurized gasses and liquids. If someone mentions pressurized gas or liquid, someone will say pressurized gas is dangerous (duh, but it depends on the pressure and the volume), someone else linking the Wikipedia page on the Byford Dolphin accident, and/or someone will link a training video on pressure differential and/or someone will like a web-page on hydraulic injection and then it devolving into virtue signaling about safety around high pressure things.
- DEFCON28 8y agoAre they unusually well-compensated for this sort of construction work?
- marvin 8y agoProbably not up to the risk, on average.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Hendrikto 8y agoIt may not be politically correct to say, but there ARE differences between men and women. One of them is that, generally speaking, men are more willing to take higher risks for money and recognition.
- Xylakant 8y agoSaying this is politically correct. The contentious issue is the question of why this is so. Is it because society shapes us in such a way that men are more inclined to take risks for money and recognition. This would imply things can change and women can be excellent saturation divers. Or is it because our genes shape us in this way, making it impossible for women to excel at diving.
- yason 8y agoOr maybe money and recognition aren't that valuable intrinsically and the industry is basically (ab)using men craving for those both. Maybe women are simply much smarter to not choose that line of job in the first place, or it would take a lot more of something else than money and recognition to convince them to take those risks.
- Xylakant 8y agoThat might be true but brings you back to the question why this is so. Are women intrinsically more intelligent due to their gender or does society place different expectations on the upbringing of boys, leading to a different selection of skills that develop. Or is it a mixture of both?
- stevespang 8y agoI swim laps everyday with a former saturation diver, the risk ain't worth the money.
- gaius 8y agoI know so many guys who planned to do this for 2-3 years to make some money and 20+ years later they’re still doing it, they (or their wives) spend the money faster than they make it, and their bones are getting brittle from the nitrogen... (Former professional diver but I never did North Sea etc)
- technofiend 8y agoThe unfortunate truth for some people is unless they are very careful, spending money behaves like a gas and expands to take all available volume.
- crispyporkbites 8y agoSure what is money for but to be spent
- erikpukinskis 8y agoThe other main thing is saving to be spent later.
- astura 8y agoSaving money and having a big cushion allows you a certain freedom that living paycheck to paycheck doesn't. Not only that but you can make the money you are not spending "work" for you to generate even more money.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoWhat is air for but to breathe? Still don't want to breathe it faster than you can make it.
- PsylentKnight 8y agoTo accumulate enough to quit your dangerous job that makes your bones brittle.
- eggy 8y agoI worked as a technical diver, not a saturation diver, with full-face comms and Nitrox and spare air, servicing underwater hydraulics/electrical systems for over 450 dives. No need for extended stays underwater or lengthy decompression. Most injuries were related to the physical labor around heavy moving machinery and tool usage. Glad to say there were few injuries and these were all minor injuries of those involved. The important technical point is that the largest increase in volume takes place in the first atmosphere or 33 ft (10 m) under the surface. The inverted bucket example of a full bucket of air going from full of air to half air at 33 ft below surface. It goes from 1/2 full of air to 1/3 at the 2-3 atm change. And that's where most typical recreational diving takes place with a maximum of 30 m to 40 m (100 ft to 130 ft). Diving in confined spaces with the surface blocked by structure or machinery, and with the occasional oil leak causing visibility of less than 24 inches due to light diffusion provided for a mix of challenging tasks while staying calm and rational. I miss that part of it all.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoSorry if this is a stupid question but how far down could you dive?
- 5DFractalTetris 8y agoIt depends on the tables and physiology, because you need to safely oxygenate all the body's tissues with regular breathing at depth. He could probably dive [edit: said Nitrox, I'd learned non-air Nitrox increases maximum depth but it increases time-at-depth] Trimix until about 100m, deeper might need a different mix.
- joeguilmette 8y agoNitrox’s maximum operating depth is ~32m at 32%. Oxygen toxicity is a quick death. To go deeper you need to add helium and actually reduce the amount of oxygen in the gas.
- chaosite 8y ago
- kk58 8y agoSat diving in oil and gas is primarily conducted off a "DSV" aka diving support vessel. Usually SAT spread ia required for subsea work below 40m to 130m. While it is theoretically possible for deeper sat dives, the burn rate of oxygen at deeper depths is quite high which results in big increase in diving crew to 1 manhour of job. Most diving crews also hhave a DMT or diving medical tech. Kinda like diving ER. Mostly this stuff is safe but sometimes divers get disoriented or make mistakes which results in hazards.
- cagenut 8y agoAs much as I appreciate this type of content/story, its really starting to get old to read multi-paragraph descriptions with the very occasional drawing trying to tell me what the chamber looks like, when in 30 seconds of text-on-video with cuts and arrows they could have given me twice the info and left me with a much clearer understanding.
- tyrankh 8y agoContrary opinion; I hate video and greatly appreciate the use of text and picture. It loads faster, I can skim easier, I can offline consume it, and I can consume it without headphones.
- yosito 8y agoAll that for less than $60/hr.
- pzone 8y ago$1400/24 is not a very fair comparison. Just to start, I bet these guys have to sleep significantly more than 8 hours per day, and that's no different from any other job involving strenuous labor. Also, living in a cramped pod does sound like a drag, but if you're lying in bed with Facebook and Netflix I think it counts as downtime.
- aksyn 8y agoI got into diving a couple of years ago, and managed to combine the two passions - there's an Open Source diving computer[1], and it's fascinating to read through the source[2]. I was surprised on looking into it more that we're really just winging it algorithmically + safety margins, based on research done in the 60s. The empirical research basically consisted of the Navy et al. throwing people in at depth, and seeing what got them "bent". Everybody's physiology is different though, and there are a large number of factors over-and-above that which affect whether you'll suffer Decompress Sickness (DCS). Whilst there have been some iterations on Bühlmann[3] such as VPM-B[4] (which is based on bubble diameter vs. tissue compartment loading), the field is still lacking IMHO. Not really through any fault of their own, it's just very difficult/expensive to peer into the body whilst they're down there to see what's going on, and it seems we'd need a large sample size due to individual physiology playing a part. Still, the algos seem to work... most of the time. Just don't drink too much alcohol, sleep well, hydrate. And do your stops! :) Interestingly, saturation divers / Navy generally don't use a computer as the divemaster singularly plans the dives for the group with massive safety margins. As they're already saturated, they're generally not doing stops "outside" in the wet anyway. If they do have a computer, it will even have the tables/algos removed from it. [1] https://heinrichsweikamp.com/ https://heinrichsweikamp.com/ [2] https://bitbucket.org/heinrichsweikamp/ostc4/wiki/Home https://bitbucket.org/heinrichsweikamp/ostc4/wiki/Home [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BChlmann_decompression_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BChlmann_decompression_al... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_computer#Algorithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_computer#Algorithms Edit: Formatting
- steve19 8y agoThat dice computer looks great. Do you own one? Do like it?
- aksyn 8y agoI have both the OSTC4 and OSTC3 Plus. The screens are extremely visible underwater, with the OSTC4 having a better resolution and much larger screen (equivalent brightness). There are quite a few YouTube videos of other computers to compare - these stood out. As far as computers go, they have all the features needed (even up to tech). I find having a nice piece of technology on my wrist provides some intangible comfort, especially on Blackwater dives :) The screen is so vivid I even managed to spot a battery warning (forgot to charge it) on my buddies computer from distance!
- NKosmatos 8y agoNice read about the life of aquanauts. Strange that there isn’t a modern action/drama movie about them.
- agitator 8y agoI thought the same thing. This topic would make for an entertaining movie.
- Starwatcher2001 8y agoA few years ago I did a "hard hat" diving experience that gives a teeny, tiny view into what these divers experience, and wow did it increase my respect for them. It also included being compressed in the "pot" down to 50m and getting narked to hell. Any UK bods fancy trying the experience lookup "York Diver Training".