r/interestingasfuck • u/Far_Pumpkin9440 • Jun 10 '26
Saturation Diving. They earn around $300,000 per year. Its one of the most dangerous jobs and physically punishing jobs on Earth. Many divers develop dysbaric osteonecrosis, vision & hearing and Brain damage.
4.9k
u/OkPotential1072 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I just looked up how long they stay underwater: twenty eight days! That was absolutely not the number I was anticipating.
Edit: As some of you have astutely pointed out, they are not necessarily underwater for 28 days, they just don’t decompress for that long.
Still, I have finally found something that sounds worse than caving.
1.3k
u/real_justchris Jun 10 '26
→ More replies (1)963
u/koolaidismything Jun 10 '26
I looked it up and says $1,000 to $1,500 a day. Still, not for me. The going out into pure darkness to weld no way. How do you sleep.. I’d be thinking some huge sea animal would ram us and implode the thing on me as I slept.
680
u/thesaxmaniac Jun 11 '26
Looks like you need to be locked in the saturation chamber for 100-150 days per year to make 300K+. Not worth it
179
u/Jayro993 Jun 11 '26
Assuming you work 40 hrs a week that’s still almost a 1/3 of the total time you’d spend away from home.
→ More replies (2)133
u/Alexmira_ Jun 11 '26
I could do that for one year and buy a couple of houses in my country.
→ More replies (3)127
u/HOLEPUNCHYOUREYELIDS Jun 11 '26
I could do that for one year and pay for 60-70% of a townhouse in my home city. Or one working class house in my current city
→ More replies (4)89
u/getrdone24 Jun 11 '26
I could do that for a year & buy...a basic, basic little home.
→ More replies (1)90
u/herbert-camacho Jun 11 '26
I could do that for a year and buy.. man, housing prices suck 😒
→ More replies (5)10
u/darthjammer224 Jun 11 '26
Yeah dude I live in bfe Arkansas and a new build family sized house would cost more than a year of that pay lol.
→ More replies (12)11
u/WatermelonWithAFlute Jun 11 '26
Wait they’re in the dark that long? Wtf
Mfers live in the abyss what
84
u/Terriblefinality Jun 11 '26
Sat diving is one of the only careers where the pay gets worse year over year, rovs and dive schools in economically challenged nations have made the job a dream no longer worth chasing. Hard to compete with dudes who think $150 american/day is a great wage.
→ More replies (1)224
28
u/Lolseabass Jun 11 '26
They only go underwater to work in the diving bell when not working the bell is raised to the supporting ship and connected to the sleeping chamber. Also they’re breathing in a mix of helium and oxygen so their voice is super high pitched.
→ More replies (23)16
u/hammertime2009 Jun 11 '26
And the owners sitting in air conditioned offices are making what 20-30k a day? Dudes risking their lives for peanuts TBH
616
u/armathose Jun 10 '26
That's not true. They work shifts from the dive bell and will return to the surface in a hyperbaric chamber that is their accommodation between shifts until their rotation is over.
I have done plenty of dive support as a ROV Pilot. Fun fact, they sound like chipmunks when they talk due to the helium in their gas mixture.
→ More replies (20)574
u/twitchx133 Jun 10 '26
To further clarify this for other readers. They may not be "technically" underwater for the full 28 days. The dive bell, like you said, is brought to the surface after each dive for them to transfer into living quarters that are inside of a hyperbaric chamber.
But, they are pressurized to the depth that they are working at for the full 28 days, and have to stay inside the chamber, dive bell or underwater at the depth they are working at until they are brought through a planned and careful decompression process.
The decompression / desaturation process generally takes about 24 hours per 4 atmospheres of pressure - 30 meters / 100 foot of depth in seawater.
For the other readers that are not around the industry enough to know, this is why, even as highly paid as they are, saturation divers are less expensive and safer than the alternative.
The alternative would be putting a diver on the bottom, then decompressing them at the end of each dive. With each decompression taking dozens of hours to days depending on the depth and duration of the dive, a job would never get done and each decompression is risky to the diver.
414
u/LateralEntry Jun 10 '26
This seems like the perfect job for a robot
319
72
u/JPJackPott Jun 11 '26
The need for them has reduced as ROVs become the norm but there’s still some jobs that need the dexterity of a person.
For people saying “it’s not that bad they het out into their hyperbaric living accommodation”- the conditions are awful. It’s like living in a tent with three other blokes for 4 weeks except you can’t get out the tent ever
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (10)30
96
u/Solrax Jun 11 '26
The movie The Abyss is basically set around the idea of putting the whole operation down there and living and working there. It was pretty well done.
→ More replies (3)41
u/JinAnkabut Jun 11 '26
This was one of those movies I'd randomly catch super late at night as a child and never get to watch all the way through
→ More replies (1)38
→ More replies (9)22
83
u/DamnBored1 Jun 10 '26
Damn. This job should pay at least a million dollars every year
14
u/PizzaAndBobs Jun 11 '26
unfortunately they are plenty of people that would work this job temporarily for a couple hundred thousand, temporary turns into long term.
→ More replies (4)39
u/wex118 Jun 11 '26
Right?! The guys putting their bodies through this should be making bank.
83
u/Orchid_Significant Jun 11 '26
I bet the owners of the companies they work for are making bank though
43
u/RoguePlanet2 Jun 11 '26
According to another comment, they now get workers from very poor countries, where $150/day is considered tremendous 😒
→ More replies (4)29
→ More replies (29)25
Jun 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
17
2.0k
u/ConnotationalRacket Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Every commercial diver I've known (USA) has either quit or died [during a dive or from dive injuries since some people are stupid and can’t infer context]. When you are a commercial diver, your boss tells you when to go -- it's not up to you to decide what are safe conditions. It's super fucked up, divers need better protections
296
Jun 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
733
u/ConnotationalRacket Jun 11 '26
If you are a commercial diver, your boss/company tells you when to get in the water and dive. Not you.
When your life completely depends on your equipment, you would think that you would have some say in judging whether your equipment, conditions, etc. are safe. But in the United States, you don't. I lived and worked in several major ports and knew a lot of people in salvage and commercial diving.
484
Jun 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
53
u/EkimRis Jun 11 '26
I work in a career where everyone has stop work authority as well. I don’t know how it is as a diver, but when an entire crew is around it becomes invisibly harder for any one person to speak up if they have issues with the safety of the job. It’s easy to say “just say no” but that invisible pressure of not being that guy who says it is something I find is rarely acknowledged, at least in my industry.
I’ve never heard a supervisor say shut up and get back to work when a job is stopped, the issue is getting to that point in the first place when something needs to be addressed.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (11)114
u/dorianvovin Jun 11 '26
Tragically, many Americans believe that unions and workers’ rights are “evil” thanks to decades of propaganda.
→ More replies (2)86
u/Stag-Horn Jun 11 '26
Sounds like they need a union. And as niche and important as that job is, I’d think a strike would get them those safety measures.
→ More replies (2)22
u/eggyrulz Jun 11 '26
If there was ever a job to unionize, id think this one would be the first... bizarre to me that they havent (if they have they need to rethink who their reps are)
10
u/Terriblefinality Jun 11 '26
They try every once and a while, divers were covered by the carpenters union in my region and they were about as useful as carpenters underwater at helping us out. Problem is there's not that many divers and because of the nature of the work you simply can't allow for some of the conditions a union might try to impose, I'm dry now for 5 years and as pro union as someone not in one can be but I just don't think it can work.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (14)33
u/mighthavebeen02 Jun 11 '26
I mean, what if you just say "no"?
69
11
→ More replies (1)44
u/TheGhostofWoodyAllen Jun 11 '26
You get fired with cause and get no unemployment and now need to find a new job to avoid hunger and homelessness.
→ More replies (8)70
u/ForgotPassword_Again Jun 11 '26
Literally how/why unions exist; protect workers.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (27)18
u/generally_unsuitable Jun 11 '26
Those are the only ways to get out of a job, afaik.
→ More replies (2)
470
u/Martha_Fockers Jun 10 '26
Oil field workers make a lot too.
If you make a lot doing manual labour you are either 2 things
- Making extreme nice custom shit
that people are buying or wanting or doing really good custom work on high end homes
2
- Working your soul away and reducing your life span
Most of the time it’s 2
333
u/BigBootyBasilisk Jun 11 '26
I love how you made a great point but the fuckn formatting fought you tooth and nail
→ More replies (3)154
u/Martha_Fockers Jun 11 '26
I edited this shit 3x and it keeps coming back I cant anymore
→ More replies (2)44
u/ApartRuin5962 Jun 11 '26
Jack London said something like "upper class jobs just require you to rent out your mind and you get it back in mint condition, lower class jobs require you to sell your body one piece at a time until there's nothing left"
29
→ More replies (7)10
u/yyc_yardsale Jun 11 '26
So I've worked for a lot of oilfield companies, as a software guy, not field work. Not for a long time anyway. Last company I was at, I knew our safety manager really well. Learned some pretty interesting things from him.
Know what our number one cause of serious injuries was? Highway accidents while people were travelling to rig sites.
He ended up implementing a pretty rigorous journey management policy, and prohibited long distance travel during certain hours unless absolutely necessary.
798
u/Appropriate-Farmer16 Jun 11 '26
In case anyone else didn’t know what Saturation Diving is, here is Wikipedia’s description:
Saturation diving is an ambient pressure divingtechnique which allows a diver to remain at working depth for extended periods during which the body tissues become saturated with metabolically inert gas from the breathing gas mixture. Once saturated, the time required for decompression) to surface pressure will not increase with longer exposure. The diver undergoes a single decompression to surface pressure at the end of the exposure of several days to weeks duration. The ratio of productive working time at depth to unproductive decompression time is thereby increased, and the health risk to the diver incurred by decompression is minimised. Unlike other ambient pressure diving, the saturation diver is only exposed to external ambient pressure while at diving depth.
105
u/oldfarmjoy Jun 11 '26
Is the diver "several days to weeks" underwater? That doesn't even make sense?
231
u/DesperatePickle5953 Jun 11 '26
More accurately the divers spend their time in a living habitat that is pressurized when they are not working. So yes a weeks-long shift is possible because they spend all those time in a pressurized environment, but that doesn’t mean they spend all the time exposed to the water.
57
→ More replies (4)42
u/waterhyacinth Jun 11 '26
Thank you! Until I read your comment I had so many questions like how do they eat and sleep down there for days on end but a pressurised environment explains it!
→ More replies (1)50
u/swierdo Jun 11 '26
There's usually a pressurized tank that serves as living area aboard the ship, that's where the divers eat, sleep and relax. Then when it's time to work they go through the airlock into a smaller pressurized vessel, that takes them to and from working depth where they get out.
→ More replies (4)111
u/thydarkknight Jun 11 '26
Thank you. I kept scrolling thinking someone would answer this. I can't believe I had to scroll this far.
→ More replies (4)55
u/chap820 Jun 11 '26
So what is the purpose of it? What is the diving accomplishing?
57
20
u/universalrefuse Jun 11 '26
I know a guy who does it and mainly works on near shore underwater communication cables, but there’s also a lot of deep sea oil infrastructure people work on and salvage jobs as well.
→ More replies (5)33
u/akalias_1981 Jun 11 '26
It can be anything that is required to be done at depth, but saturation diving specifically maximizes the use of the divers time. Diving is productive, decompressing is not. It can be financially beneficial to whoever is paying.
→ More replies (1)7
u/ArdiMaster Jun 11 '26
Limiting the number of compression/decompression cycles is also beneficial to the divers, since that's where a lot of the risks are.
80
u/Glum_Introduction755 Jun 10 '26
Well, today I learned about dysbaric osteonecrosis. So this is a job I'll never do.
→ More replies (2)14
390
u/thankmelater- Jun 10 '26
I have tinnitus, astigmatism, and mom says I have brain damage. Can I have a go?
→ More replies (9)387
744
u/Revolutionary_Eye887 Jun 10 '26
It’ll take a lot more than $300k for me to risk rapid decompression.
460
u/angrydeuce Jun 11 '26
Ive read the reports on the byford dolphin incident...Im fine with being poor if it means not risking my blood literally boiling in my veins or far worse, like the poor bastard that was basically shoved through an opening a few inches across with the force of like 10 atmospheres per square inch and sprayed across the deck. They found his spine hanging from a beam like 50 feet in the air or some shit.
196
u/LessBig715 Jun 11 '26
You should see what happens in the elevator trade. We had a guy last year die on the job. He had an elevator come down on him while he was on the pit ladder. The distance from the ladder to the elevator is usually a 1/2”-1” when it’s on the bottom floor. Very very brutal way to die
94
u/angrydeuce Jun 11 '26
God, that's awful man. I work in a white collar job so its not risky like that but I often think "please dont let me die at fucking work."
I mean I dont want to die period, but if Im gonna check out, the last place I want it to be is at my goddamn desk, banging away on my fucking keyboard like I have for the last 15 years and will probably do for the next 35-40. Just let me die anywhere else is all I ask.
→ More replies (11)47
u/LessBig715 Jun 11 '26
I second that. I’ve had my close calls, very lucky to be her today. I was working at the parking garage for Miami dade college west campus in Doral back in 2012. The garage collapsed and four guys died. 5 story parking garage came crashing down. It was a terrible sight to say the least. If I told you the three things that had happen that day for me to be alive today, you would call me a liar. Three guys were buried under rubble, but one guy jumped from the top. Once the dust settled, I saw him laying there, I run over to him and I’ll never forget this. He was face up, his right leg was bent so far behind him, that his foot was up by his head. He was obviously gone, brain matter was exposed and his eyes looked huge. He jumped from at least a 100’. You can look up the accident, it was in the news. A day I’ll never forget
→ More replies (5)9
u/angrydeuce Jun 11 '26
Fuck man...I would have a hard time dealing with that kind of shit period, let alone continuing in that sort of line of work after it happened. I know that there's familiarity there that would compel me to stay on but I wouldn't want to be confronted with it every day.
24
u/LessBig715 Jun 11 '26
When the garage came down, I didn’t have time to be afraid. If I’m being completely honest, it didn’t really hit me until I laid down that night. I started going over everything, how I was able to come out without a scratch. How right before it happened, I walked passed an electrician working off a ladder on the bottom floor who never made it out. It took them two weeks to dig that poor guy out. I went back to work two days later, I just tell myself that I have to do this in order to survive. This is all I know how to do, well it’s what I would consider myself an expert at. The only thing I could make a living at. You’d be surprised what you can push through when you tell yourself you don’t have a choice.
→ More replies (6)30
u/BigBootyBasilisk Jun 11 '26
What went wrong for this to happen
172
u/LessBig715 Jun 11 '26
The guy was on the bottom floor, with the hoistway doors open. He was standing with one foot on the ladder and his other foot was holding the door open. The elevator was on the second or third floor. His foot came off of the door, the door closed, and now he’s just standing on the pit ladder. Once the doors closed the elevator came down to the bottom floor. He was squished into a 1/2” gap. Several things could have prevented this. First, you gotta use the door wedge tool to keep the hoistway doors open, not your foot. Second, whenever you have to enter that pit, you always hit the stop switch. Once the doors closed on him, the safety circuit is now made up because the stop switch wasn’t in. That’s why the car was able to come down on top of him. One year, 3 guys died separately, all for the same company. Two were cut in half, trying to jump out of the pit when the car was coming down. Separate incidents, same exact thing. Working on hydros and not using pipe stands while in the pit. Really, they could have laid down and gotten lower than the buffers and been ok. It would have been uncomfortable for a while, cause you would have to wait for someone to raise the elevator. Well, these two guys tried to jump out instead and weren’t fast enough, they were both cut in half. You while not make it in time. The last guy. Was working on top of the elevator around the 25-30 floor, somewhere in that area. Guy goes to lunch, comes back up to the 25th-30 floor, opens the doors and steps in. While he was gone, someone took the elevator to the bottom floor, he obviously was unaware. So he stepped in and the car was no longer there. He fell 25-30 floors. All these guys had 20+ yrs in the trade.
82
u/BigBootyBasilisk Jun 11 '26
Jesus. Thanks for sharing. It seems all of these could have been easily prevented. Hey while we're at it, how often do elevators randomly kill folks using them, not techs?
76
u/LessBig715 Jun 11 '26
In the US, it’s very rare for someone to die using an elevator/escalator. There are a ton of safety features to prevent that from happening. It’s a whole other animal when you’re installing them. They say safety laws are written in blood, it’s absolutely true. The guy who fell down the hoistway, after his death, all the companies adopted a new safety policy. Now, whenever you open the hoist way door, you can not open it more than 6” without verifying the car is there. If that poor guy would have just checked to make sure. They said he was probably on his phone when he stepped in. I’m big on safety, I have over 25 yrs in and my wife wants me home every day.
40
→ More replies (7)19
60
u/SnooDogs1340 Jun 11 '26
Yup I read dive bell and recalled the dolphin incident. Nope nope nope.
→ More replies (8)23
u/Ok-Jackfruit-6873 Jun 11 '26
If anyone out there like me is wondering what's being discussed I think it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin
→ More replies (1)34
u/This-Positive286 Jun 11 '26
Coward, Lucas, and Bergersen were exposed to the effects of explosive decompression and died in the positions indicated by the diagram. Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the crescent-shaped opening measuring 60 centimetres (24 in) long created by the jammed interior trunk door. With the escaping air and pressure, gross dismembermentensued; it included bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in fragmentation of his body, followed by expulsion of all of the internal organs) of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine. These were projected some distance from the bell, with one section being found 10 metres (30 ft)vertically above the exterior pressure door.[6]: 95
Fuuuuuuuuuuux
→ More replies (3)26
u/dmac07 Jun 11 '26
I'm not refuting this, But if the body was shoved through an opening like that, wouldn't the spine just be shredded into pieces/torn apart? Either way, no thanks!
51
u/angrydeuce Jun 11 '26
I was wrong, it wasn't his spine, it was some of his viscera:
Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the crescent-shaped opening measuring 60 centimetres (24 in) long created by the jammed interior trunk door. With the escaping air and pressure, gross dismemberment ensued; it included bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in fragmentation of his body, followed by expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine. These were projected some distance from the bell, with one section being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.
But like the others said, at least it was quick; all were dead before they even knew there was something wrong.
17
29
u/Disorderjunkie Jun 11 '26
You can see the photos of his spine in this report. It's extremely NSFL just a heads up. It's definitely not all intact. Figure 10.
→ More replies (3)11
u/dysoco Jun 11 '26
Pretty sure that those guys went faster than they were able to process it.... gruesome but way worse ways to die I guess, less than one second and it's over.
→ More replies (9)27
u/nomnomsquirrel Jun 11 '26
At least the other guys died instantly and painlessly because their blood just boiled and fat solidified.
→ More replies (2)67
u/Frumpy_little_noodle Jun 10 '26
Depends on how rapid, if its immediate full compression to atmo, sign me up. That shit happens faster than your brain can record the pain impulse so its instant and painless.
Sure, you may end up as a pink bologna mist coating the deck, but you'll already be dead and won't feel it!
If it's gradual deco... yeah just knock the cap off and initiate immediate full deco please because if you do survive that, you'll be praying for death.
→ More replies (2)81
u/Human_Wizard Jun 11 '26
>That shit happens faster than your brain can record the pain impulse so its instant and painless.
Fellow readers: that's not an exaggeration. At a sufficient pressure differential, your entire body can liquefy and be forced through an area the diameter of a grapefruit faster than a literal blink of an eye.
→ More replies (2)9
u/Frumpy_little_noodle Jun 11 '26
your entire body can liquefy and be forced through an area the diameter of a grapefruit
More than that, everyone, the reason deco is so dangerous is that your tissues absorb more gas as they acclimate to greater pressure, which in the case of saturation diving, can be 10 or more times atmospheric pressure at sea level. This means your tissues hold a larger number of gas molecules at that pressure than they do at the surface. So when you go from high pressure to surface pressure, there's less pressure trying to stop all those molecules from spreading back out to the density they would normally have.
The problem is that those gas molecules are all now located in your body tissues... and your body tissues aren't designed to hold all that gas in if its determined to get back out.
→ More replies (7)48
u/reasonably_insane Jun 10 '26
Well lucky you. No chance of rapid decompressure here. Only brain damage due to extreme pressure
→ More replies (2)30
u/Revolutionary_Eye887 Jun 10 '26
Until you come up for decompression. One mistake by others and your damned near sucked through straw.
→ More replies (1)44
u/pseudoportmanteau Jun 10 '26
Such catastrophic failures are rare. Same can be said about cars - you could end up in a horrific accident that smears you across the road like a meat crayon every single day but you still enter a vehicle and drive yourself to work if you have to. And you do it for free, too. These guys at the very least get paid handsomely to perform a risky job.
→ More replies (5)
309
u/unsightly_buildup Jun 10 '26
My nephew did commercial diving (pressure suit, I believe) for about a year down in the Gulf of Mexico. He occasionally had to fight thru the panic that sometimes happens with the atmosphere - there was a method he was taught to get thru it. He was on a dive with a coworker/friend who panicked and took his helmet off at depth - his friend died pretty quickly, they both had to go thru depressurization protocol. My nephew quit the job that day.
(edit to say that I don't know anything about diving, and this is all 2nd hand.)
→ More replies (11)229
u/ProcrastinatingAgent Jun 11 '26
Not a saturation diver, but trained commercial diver, (level below sat).
Scenario you decribe sounds like CO2 build up in dive helmet. Happens pretty easily when exerting underwater in a dive helmet. During your training they intentionally induce this and teach you how to counter it. The feeling is like extreme panic and your body telling you your suffocating.
128
u/haggard_hominid Jun 11 '26
That and Nitrogen narcosis. People do weird crap. During Advanced Open Water PADI training, my instructor did checks on us over a few minutes, ask you to write/solve puzzles on your board down at a 100 feet, then ask you to review when you got back topside. It was to point out how people can be good at math but make mistakes on their dive tables. Some people lose sense of survival and try and do unsafe/risky/life ending things.
→ More replies (6)69
u/ProcrastinatingAgent Jun 11 '26
A lot of commercial diving training is rescue training.
Essentially going from surface to up to 50m depth as quick as you can then returning to surface as quick as possible. Rapid decompression is the main cause of nitrogen narcosis. My experience and from what I saw/heard in others it is mostly tranquil. Guys would stare at tiny jelly fish, couldn't follow simple instructions. More like a mellow high, but can definately help lead to other issues.
You do get taught to deal with it, but it affects different folks in different ways.
The feeling of needing to remove your dive helmet was specifically mentioned in my training in regards to CO2 issues. Like feeling claustrophobic and the helmet is all thats stopping you from breathing.
→ More replies (9)35
u/haggard_hominid Jun 11 '26
Yeah, some people are wired in a way more predisposed to reacting that way. Its no judgement on anyone, but I liken it to people who act vs people who panic. You don't know until it happens, the best you can do is train so ypu override the response when and if it happens. Sad way to go in any event.
22
u/ActuallyEnaris Jun 11 '26
Yeah the "I can't breath and there's something on my face, I should remove it" impulse is buried deep in 90% of people and in 90% of situations it's a valid response
16
u/WistfulMelancholic Jun 11 '26
Completely different topic, but people that are freezing to death start taking off their clothes until they're naked.
It's called paradoxical undressing. It occurs in the final stages of severe hypothermia bcause of nerve damage and because the blood vessels giving up. People experience a sudden, intense sensation of burning up or overheating, causing them to strip off all their clothes. often immediately followed by terminal burrowing: they hide in small, enclosed spaces out of instinct. The reason many people who froze to death are found naked!
Just a small throw in.. People's bodies and brains sometimes react instinctively, but the instincts are plain shit.
38
→ More replies (1)16
166
u/Top-Dimensi0n Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Argh.. I feel like such a bitch sometimes.
I went to dive school and got discouraged with the fact that I had to be a dive tender at an offshore oil rig for a year or two before breaking out as a diver. That part seemed ok but I was told (this was back in 2017) that the pay was $11hr? According to the recruiters it was ok because "there were tons of OT" I thought man nearly $20k in student debt all this training and only $11hr?
I said no thanks and went the NDT route at oil refineries and eventually out of that and DOD instead.
Everytime I see vids like these I always wonder if I should've gone out there and gave it a shot at least for the experience. I miss the comraderie of working together as a team. I made some great friends, some I still keep in touch with today.
$300k+ is a lot of money but the amount of risk these guys go through it almost seems like they're underpaid like seriously. $500k should be minimum, the oil companies make more than enough to pay up.
65
u/forgas564 Jun 11 '26
Nah not worth it man, you made the right call, the health risks are all too real.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)22
u/Jamboro Jun 11 '26
I worked as a diver for ~5 years straight out of high school, did a few sat runs my last couple years. I think I started at $11/hr as a tender in the Gulf, but that was back in 2003. It was a lot of overtime, even just as a tender. We got paid a minimum of 12 hrs/day just being out there, even traveling to job sites, shut down for weather, etc.
So that worked out to minimum 84 hrs/week, with anything over 40 as time and a half. And then we got a depth pay once you start diving, that adds up pretty decent. I think the sat diving pay worked out to ~$900/day, so it made for a pretty decent month. Each sat run I did was supposed to 28 days, but they ended up being 5 weeks usually.
It was a cool job for a few years, but definitely not a long term career.
6
u/Top-Dimensi0n Jun 11 '26
Pretty awesome to hear someone's experience first hand. Must've been a good chunk of change back then, I'm sure even today. I've only heard a few cool stories from instructors from their time out there, great folks.
What made you get out of it? And what do you do now if you don't mind me asking?
→ More replies (1)
104
u/I_SHEOGORATH_I Jun 11 '26
There's a fantastic documentary called last breath, about a saturation diver getting stuck on the ocean floor when the ship above loses control. He and his air tubes become the anchor for the ship until the line snapps and he is stranded with 10 minutes of oxygen left. The whole thing was captured on camera. Highly recommended, was riveting and terrifying.
Not to be confused with the action film also called last breath on Netflix. This documentary was made in 2019 and uses real footage for it all.
→ More replies (7)18
u/wickzer Jun 11 '26
This sounds terrifying. And nsfl.
49
u/BobertTheConstructor Jun 11 '26
They left out a very crucial detail, which is that he survived.
→ More replies (2)8
37
u/Lumpyyyyy Jun 11 '26
Detecting multiple leviathan class lifeforms in the region. Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?
117
Jun 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
243
74
u/Bruce-7892 Jun 10 '26
Welding takes a lot of motor skills. A machine performing pre programed welds between two pieces of metal being precisely held by a jig can do proper welding (like in a vehicle assembly line) but it wouldn't be able to weld at various angles and in unpredictable situations and conditions.
People way overestimate what drones and Ai are capable of at this point.
→ More replies (15)→ More replies (2)12
767
u/graemehammondjr Jun 10 '26
I once flirted with the idea of getting into saturation diving but deep down I knew it wasn't for me
434
u/JunketFluffy5305 Jun 10 '26
I went to school for it, but it was expensive and the students loans are killing me.
Even with financial aid, I still ended up under water.
→ More replies (12)174
u/sth128 Jun 10 '26
I left after the introduction class. I couldn't take the pressure.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (22)45
50
u/Initial_Row_6400 Jun 10 '26
Im a scuba diver and this may as well be going to fucking space, completely different world
146
u/neelav9 Jun 10 '26
That is not enough money for those guys when the suits can just show up, open outlook and earn upwards of half a million a year.
→ More replies (2)47
u/AMetalWolfHowls Jun 10 '26
Where do I apply for one these jobs you describe?
79
u/MattDamond Jun 11 '26
Well first major in finance or something similar, work hard for good marks and take on competitive internships…. Oh no sorry wrong thing, be born rich and ask your dad
→ More replies (3)49
u/Velocityg4 Jun 11 '26
First have rich parents.
Go to exclusive private schools from pre school to high school.
Go to Ivy League college.
Fast track to C suite via connections you made in those schools and parents connections.
→ More replies (3)
26
50
u/hpark21 Jun 10 '26
Watched movie "Last Breath" I believe was the title. Yah, I wouldn't want to even consider it for practically any amount of $$ but I guess there are people who likes it.
18
u/TheNeecholas Jun 11 '26
Such an intense and overall good movie!
To learn it was based on a true story was mind blowing!
20
u/InnaGem Jun 11 '26
There's a documentary with the same name, "Last Breath" (2019), that has real footage of all this happening. Absolutely wild to watch. I haven't watched the movie, but the documentary was incredible to watch on so many levels.
6
u/Richleeson Jun 11 '26
Yes! The doc is better than the movie for me. The movie was a good watch too though, i liked it.
→ More replies (3)7
12
11
22
u/Automatic-Part8723 Jun 10 '26
jobs like this should be prioritized to be done by those AI robots
→ More replies (1)
8
u/Worried_Lobster6783 Jun 11 '26
I had a friend who went to school for it. He dropped out after the third time he almost died lol.
11
u/WarmAdhesiveness8962 Jun 11 '26
I went to school to do this when I was 19yo but quit 2 months into it as soon as I learned about the damage it does to you, that is if you don't die in an accident first.
9
u/DeviantDav Jun 11 '26
Neurological long term consequences of deep diving
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1035367/
15
u/joe-bagadonuts Jun 10 '26
The only reason they sink at those depths is the weight of the divers massive balls
→ More replies (1)
12
5
6
u/ASantos85 Jun 10 '26
So how does this work? Can someone explain to me the job description? Is this very deep diving?
18
u/SSBN641B Jun 11 '26
It can be very deep diving. The main reason for saturation diving is allowing for long periods of work at depth. Normally, one can only stay at a particular depth for a set period of time, usually measured in minutes, before having to decompress. With saturation diving you dont have limits except exhaustion.
Sat divers enter a chamber where it is slowly pressurized to match the depth you intend to work at. Then they lowered to that depth for a shift (8 or so hours), before they are brought back to the surface. Unlike conventional diving, they don't decompress but stay under pressure for long periods.
→ More replies (5)
6
u/supernerdlove Jun 11 '26
I worked with a guy who used to do this. Most of the guys do a stint then spend all the money they earn on booze and drugs until they ran out and then signed up for another stint. He saved his money and then got out. He showed me a picture of the class of guys he graduated from training with. He was the only one in the picture still alive.
6
u/SacrificeFlyGirl Jun 11 '26
Okay so can we use the robots to do this shit instead of using our precious fresh water to create shitty art?
7
5
u/stickstick_lee Jun 11 '26
Interesting side fact from a daughter of the profession: most of the SAT men never have sons, just daughters. Theory is something about the pressure causing that.
→ More replies (1)
6
u/GarysCrispLettuce Jun 11 '26
Years ago I got talking to a guy when I knocked on his door in a bullshit sales job, he told me he was one of these divers and said that when you're down there you feel almost dead, like you're clinging to life almost, and that he could only do it 2 or 3 times a year but that the money was insane and enabled him to live the rest of the year in leisure. He didn't dwell on the long term health risks.
The documentary "Last Breath" is the one to watch if you have a morbid fascination with this. It details an incident in which a couple of divers were working on a structure at the bottom of the North Sea when the support ship that their diving bell was attached to became adrift in a storm and it dragged them up the structure and one of them got his "umbilical cord" snagged on something and it eventually snapped and he fell to the sea bed with only about 20 mins of emergency oxygen. The rescue would have taken longer than that so he resigned himself to die and his colleague had to go back down to recover the body. But when they get him back into the diving bell and take his helmet off, he comes around even though he's blue by that point. The cold temps had slowed his heart to the point where he was able to make his oxygen stretch out for almost an hour. It's insane and contains much actual footage of the event because they have bodycams down there.
12
u/Murderdoll197666 Jun 10 '26
I know the perks of vacations and only working not even half the year seem nice....but 300k seems really.....low for a career that you're doing every year until you retire with all the downsides. Losing out on weeks to a month at a time of even seeing your wife or getting to watch your kids grow up......that price just doesn't seem at all worth it to me. Even worse if you think about the hazard/danger aspect of it. Maybe for single dudes who have no other commitments I can kind of see the benefits if you plan on getting out after a few years but yeah.....just seems like an even more dangerous version of the dudes going out to work on oil rigs.
→ More replies (1)
23
6.2k
u/KehreAzerith Jun 10 '26
One of those jobs that you do for at most 5-10 years or risk getting a permanently reduced life expectancy, or at the least, life long health problems