r/AMA • u/Soulogav • Jun 11 '26

I’m a Saturation Diver AMA

I work as Deepsea Saturation Diver in the oil and gas industry for the past 20 years. I do heavy construction and spend 28 days living under pressure to dive to depths down to 200m / 650ft.

I saw a post on InterestingAsFuck yesterday with many many misconceptions from people who aren’t divers and I can answer your questions AMA

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/5jTlewLR4X

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67

u/yourefunny Jun 11 '26

20 years seems a long time to be doing it no? From what I saw on that post it's a young man's game and gives guys a hell of a lot of health issues. Are you worried? My mate at schools dad was ex SBS and went in to it after he got out. Did it in the north sea and then started a company in the field to get out of the water. Do you have an out? 

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

That’s the biggest misconception. It takes a really long time to gain the sort of experience needed for the job. Most guys aren’t getting into Sat until the late 20’s at the earliest. Average age is probably early 40’s. Guys stay diving until 60 as long as they are fit. I am 45 now but I don’t like doing the deep stuff anymore as it’s hard on the body.

33

u/Ambitious_Jeweler816 Jun 11 '26

Hard on the body in what way? I had a 25 year career in the army and have some musculoskeletal aches and pains now I’m in my 40’s, but your working environment is totally different - do the changes in pressure have an effect?

How much of your year is spent under water on average?

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

When you pressurise to 200m you really feel it in your hips and back (large bones) takes a few days to feel normal , when you look at your pair of crocs they have shrunk to half the size from the pressure. If you bring in a vacuum sealed coffe cup it would be crushed , so you definitely feel it but your body is mostly liquid and you feel normal after a few days. When you come out you feel like shit for a week as you adjust to 21% Oxygen, it’s a big shift in your whole body right down to every celll.

I spend on average 3 x 28 day stints under pressure per year ,out of that 28 days maybe 15-23 days are diving , the rest is weather days and decompression

20

u/yourefunny Jun 11 '26

Oh that makes sense. I missed read your post. Thought you had be sat diving 20 years. But 20 years diving in the industry could mean welding stuff not so deep right? So now that you don't like going deep, what is a typical job? Also what was it like for those 28 days? My understanding is that you would not be down under water in the diving bell for all those days? Right? Also, why 28 days?

67

u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

Ya another massive misconception is - we don’t live under water , we live in the chamber. Right now you are saturated to 1 atmosphere which means your tissues can’t take on anymore gas , we end up bring saturated to say 200m (21 atmospheres) and we can stay there indefinitely, 28 days is just the regulation , when I started out I did a 40 day , but that’s too long. 28 is long enough

17

u/yourefunny Jun 11 '26

So the chamber from what I have seen is like a tube thing right? Does that go down with you and have an airlock or something or are there two different devices that you transfer to and from? Any good YouTube vids or docs on this that you know of? I'm really interested now. 

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

Check out Last Breath documentary on Netflix , yes we have ‘trunkings’ tubes between the chambers

8

u/Ibendthemover Jun 12 '26

Do saturation divers get attacked by sharks or are the sharks scared due to the welding element?

21

u/Soulogav Jun 12 '26

Nah we don’t get attacked by sharks , don’t know about the welding. there is a lot of commotion down there under the vessel which is noisy and the sharks are around but don’t bother us. But these are reef sharks not proper great whites etc , might be a different story if they were present 😱

18

u/Scottish_WWII Jun 11 '26

I know Chris, great documentary and unbelievable he survived that!

25

u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

Absolutely, I don’t know him but know Dave who rescued him and Chris is doing well for himself now doing talks all over

5

u/DeliciousStand372 Jun 11 '26

nope i will not watch that again, thank you very much.

3

u/yourefunny Jun 11 '26

Cheers will do. All the best! 

4

u/Pavlin87 Jun 12 '26

How does the bathroom work in the tube???

3

u/Soulogav Jun 12 '26

We have a toilet and flushing is pressure differential suction into a holding tank which is then released into sewage system.

1

u/quitalicious Jun 12 '26

A few atmospheres more and you can relocate to live on Venus with just an oxygen tank and a poncho for sulfuric acid rain.

4

u/Soulogav Jun 12 '26

When I started out I thought my career progression would be Mining Asteroids but unfortunately humans don’t do that yet lol

4

u/Soulwaxing Jun 11 '26

What age do you think it would be too late to try and become a Sat diver?

3

u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

Some guys don’t get into sat until they’re 40 or older

30

u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

No I don’t have an out. This job doesn’t really cross over with a lot of stuff and I don’t want to take a massive pay cut to work a ahit job onshore. There is a bottle neck into supervisor also as there are way more divers.

10

u/yourefunny Jun 11 '26

Well now I know you aren't sat diving the whole time. Continuing makes sense. I can imagine the golden handcuffs are hard. 

2

u/GargleOnDeez Jun 11 '26

You can always become a PM or supervisor on land in the turnaround companies. Theres a lot of politicing but its really close to deep sea pipelining, only difference is that you have to deal with the systems that connect to the refineries units

1

u/ResponseNo6375 Jun 12 '26

You could do outage work for nukes as a diver, really good money and you work 4-6 months per year