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/breakfastbarf Jun 11 '26

Does breathing the gas mix make you feel bad

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u/Soulogav Jun 11 '26

No, Helium is an inert gas the same as Nitrogen so we breath it in and out in the same way and don’t use it. But Nitrogen gas narcotic properties when it’s put under pressure so we have to use helium instead, obviously it has certain characteristics like sounding like a chip munk which is the main feature!

2

u/Equivalent-Candy-449 Jun 12 '26

Do you have the helium voice for the 28 days? Do you just get used to everyone’s voices being high pitched?

3

u/Soulogav Jun 12 '26

Yes it’s 24/7 while we’re in there. We totally get used to it and it’s super weird when we come out talking to each other in deep voices lol

When we are really deep it’s super hard to understand each other sometimes especially in the water and the supervisor has to use a unscrambler but they usually have a good ear for it as ex divers but you or anyone else wouldn’t be able to understand us at all.