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The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

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Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#51

Post by jsjohnst »

joeguilmette wrote: post #38
5DFractalTetris wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

Nitrox’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.

To expand further, oxygen is toxic at 1.6ATA. For those unfamiliar, pressure doubles every 10m (33ft). So if I tried to breath 100% oxygen at 33ft (aka 2.0ATA), I’d die pretty quickly. At 66ft, that caps you at about 40% oxygen. At 99ft, you essentially can’t breath any higher oxygen concentration than natural air.

As such, nitrox’s purpose isn’t to increase depth. It’s actually used to increase bottom time (at a loss of max depth) without needing decompression. You get this increased bottom time due to lower amounts of nitrogen.

I’ve logged hundreds of nitrox dives from 28% - 60% oxygen levels, but never bit the bullet and gotten into more advanced air mixtures like Trimix. Trimix and other specialty blends are hard to get air fills for at the places I most commonly dive, so I keep pushing it off.

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#52

Post by oh_sigh »

xevb3k wrote: post #14
Hendrikto wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

I guess the parent comment has been edited, because this comment seems to come out of the blue in relation to what the current parent comment says. My personal opinion is that if you’re going to make statements like this you should back them up. As a counter example, being a police officer would I imagine not be considered the safest of jobs. But 30% of police officers in the UK are women, and the number is steadily…

A better example would be a dangerous job where women are overrepresented, not underrepresented.

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#53

Post by yardie »

GordonS wrote: post #39
yardie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

It'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.

It 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!

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#54

Post by SwellJoe »

DEFCON28 wrote: post #7

Are they unusually well-compensated for this sort of construction work?

Depends on your definition of "well-compensated". For people in tech, it seems pretty low. $1400/day is what's mentioned in the article, and I can't imagine they work a regular schedule, as there would necessarily be more downtime. Contractors in tech, and several other fields, can make similar money (factoring in that few fields would require as much downtime) without putting their lives at risk and without going into near total isolation for weeks at a time.

So...it's a pretty good living, but it's not a good life unless you just really love diving. But, even then, I can't imagine this is the fun kind of diving. Then again, as with most high dollar specialist industries, someone ambitious could probably work in it for a few years and then start a company and become management/sales/support for a team of lower ranking folks who do the hard work of actually diving. That's common in a lot of jobs that are hard on your body, like construction.

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#55

Post by vertex-four »

yardie wrote: post #53
GordonS wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'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.

It 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!

There'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.

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#56

Post by aksyn »

I 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/

[2] https://bitbucket.org/heinrichsweikamp/ostc4/wiki/Home

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BChlmann_decompression_al...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_computer#Algorithms

Edit: Formatting

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#57

Post by erikpukinskis »

vertex-four wrote: post #55
yardie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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!

There'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.

Is it important for families to be together 7 days a week?

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#58

Post by eggy »

zackbloom wrote: post #41
5DFractalTetris wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

I think he means trimix, not nitrox. Nitrox reduces the maximum depth of the dive vs air, doesn't increase it. - Oxygen 0-20 ft - Nitrox in-between depending on % oxygen - Air 0-200 ft - Trimix 0-250 ft - Hypoxic Trimix up to 500 ft, minimum depending on % oxygen

I you were referring to me, I was using a 36% oxygen Nitrox mix. We were working at less than 10 m, so this increases working time not depth, but you need to be careful with oxygen toxicity as mentioned above. For deeper dives, air and then Trimix for up to 76 m.

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#59

Post by erikpukinskis »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #45
technofiend wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate truth for some people is unless they are very careful, spending money behaves like a gas and expands to take all available volume.

Sure what is money for but to be spent

The other main thing is saving to be spent later.

Re: The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver

#60

Post by tyrankh »

cagenut wrote: post #34

As 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.

Contrary 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.
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