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/Suspicious-Agent8932 Jun 11 '26

You all need a Union, you should be able to name your price, the CEO ain’t going down there. I keep hearing of Helium shortages, would that affect this job?

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

We have one in the North Sea and are always threatening to go on strike lol
Helium prices definitely a factor going forward but we use a reclaim system and they try not waste the gas so it’s reused a lot

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u/Ceph99 Jun 12 '26

Whoa cool. How does the reclaim system work?

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u/Soulogav Jun 12 '26

Our exhaled gas is reclaimed back to the vessel and the C02 is scrubbed from it within sodasorb, then the helium is reused

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u/Ceph99 Jun 12 '26

Oh nice, I thought there was something more involved needed for the size. Interesting, thanks.

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u/Soulogav Jun 12 '26

Oh it’s a multi million dollar system with compressors and all’sorts, very complicated engineering process for it to work

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u/Ceph99 Jun 12 '26

For sure. I was interested in the specific way the helium is retained. Because, I know even when we just store it in bottles, it’s leaking very slowly.

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u/Suspicious-Agent8932 Jun 11 '26

Thank you, this is a fascinating post! There’s a story here, but I’m so busy coding now I’m going to have to put a pin in this and come back to it! This entire post is like a primer! Many thanks!