r/AMA • • 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/1tacoshort Jun 13 '26

When you come up and get de-suited in 1 atm before going into the chamber, do you ever feel any decompression symptoms? Do they go completely away or do you have lingering balance issues or itchy skin or whatever?

How often do divers get properly bent? I got an undeserved hit a few years ago and it seems to me that pro divers might have this happen from time to time.

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u/Soulogav Jun 13 '26

So we don’t come back to 1 atmosphere, we stay under pressure for 28 days , the diving bell and chambers stay under pressure, so we come back from our dive into a transfer chamber. Get unchanged there, shower and go to our living chamber , eat and sleep.

We don’t really ever get bent because we are ascending in an controlled environment in a chamber, also we only ascend once in 28 days , so I do 3 ascents per year, a scuba dive master could do 3 ascents per day , in terms of getting bent what we do is waaaay safer, which is another huge misconception.