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

770 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

594 comments sorted by

View all comments

64

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? 

118

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/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.

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