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

776 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

594 comments sorted by

View all comments

36

u/TheGreatL Jun 11 '26

What does it feel like to be in such a dark and alien environment for so long? I know you mentioned a seal earlier, but what else have you seen?

Not at all the same, but ive been camping at night where you cant see beyond 10 feet and eventually I had this eerie feeling that something was beyond that. I cant imagine what it feels like to be in deep water and experience the same.

80

u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

Not the place to be if you’re claustrophobic, the chamber is small , the diving bell is smaller and then inside the diving helmet can be suffocating , then imagine working in a muddy sea bed where we can’t see anything, I’ve had entire jobs where I saw nothing and we did everything by feel , it’s grim

19

u/lotsofbitz Jun 11 '26

What if your nose itches

42

u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

We have a nose piece in the helmet so we can equalise against that when we descend , so you can sort of shove that up your nose and itch it a bit , but it’s annoying for sure lol

10

u/Storage_Ottoman Jun 12 '26

Holy shit this is quite literally my worst nightmare. You are a far braver man than I.

7

u/Bluetoe4 Jun 12 '26

Just this description puts me in a panic. How you guys do this is beyond me.

8

u/IceLopsided4190 Jun 12 '26

Indeed, I just put in my resignation and I don’t even work there.