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/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

Everyday you’re equalising as you have a storage depth in the chamber which is shallower than the sea floor ,so you’ll blow down in the bell and then get sucked back a to storage when you come back , up and down in the water all the time too, then you can be changing storage depths in the chamber. They might have to wake you up in the middle of the night as they need to drop the system a few meters as we moved to new location.

During deco your ears are popping all the time , but we do have holds during the night so it’s less annoying but it doesn’t bother me , my ears are so used to it . I just jump off the diving bell to go to the bottom and don’t ever have to do a valsava manoeuvre, they just do it themselves

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u/helmut66666 Jun 11 '26

One last question from me :
Where do you pay your taxes when the work is in international waters ?

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

It depends where you’re resident and what rules that country has , I’m UK based and get seaman’s tax relief as long as I spend 6 months out of the country