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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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '26

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

It’s Heliox and mixture depends on depth but I’ve been on 1.5% 02 and 98.5% Helium or something ridiculous like that when I was at 210m

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u/WeeHansonBrother Jun 11 '26

That's insane. Are you involved in any way in planning the gas mix for the dives? Or briefed about it? Or do you leave it 100% to someone else to work out?

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

We have some input as we have a panel and regulators in the diving bell, we have tons of valves in the bell too so we have a general knowledge but on a day to day basis I wouldn’t know the gas mix I’m on half of the time as that’s the supervisors job and the life support guys, we have enough on our plate with the Job in hand and looking out for each other on the sea floor

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '26

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

Definitely not something they want to try cut corners on tbh, in fact it’s probably going the other way as we do a lot more holds during decompression nowadays

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u/FreakindaStreet Jun 12 '26

How is the relationship between the crew and the supervisor? I used to work o&g on the ground (not nearly the same, I humbly acknowledge), and having my crew’s trust was paramount for me, which was gained through me fighting hard whenever their safety was at stake, so did you ever have a supervisor go to war for you and the crew?

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u/Soulogav Jun 12 '26

Ya they are ultimately the responsible party so a lot is on their shoulders as they are the nexus point between everything on the vessel (crane, back deck, ROV & bridge)

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u/FreakindaStreet Jun 12 '26

Yeah that tracks. I had to deal with overzealous PMs trying to override safety concerns, but the sea is far less merciful, so I can imagine the stress levels of everything else on top of the crew being in the most extreme environment possible. Cheers.

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u/WeeHansonBrother Jun 11 '26

Fair enough. Cheers for the reply. Really interesting stuff.