20 Facts About Saturation diving

Saturation diving is diving for periods long enough to bring all tissues into equilibrium with the partial pressures of the inert components of the breathing gas used.

Saturation diving takes advantage of this by having divers remain in that saturated state.

Saturation diving is a specialized form of diving; of the 3,300 commercial divers employed in the United States in 2015,336 were saturation divers.

The combination of relatively large skilled personnel requirements, complex engineering, and bulky, heavy equipment required to support a saturation diving project make it an expensive diving mode, but it allows direct human intervention at places that would not otherwise be practicable, and where it is applied, it is generally more economically viable than other options, if such exist.

From this time to the 1990s the industry developed the procedures and equipment for saturation diving from pioneering and experimental, with a somewhat dubious safety record, to a mature industry with greatly improved occupational health and safety.

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Saturation diving has applications in scientific diving and commercial offshore diving.

Saturation diving is standard practice for bottom work at many of the deeper offshore sites, and allows more effective use of the diver's time while reducing the risk of decompression sickness.

The practice of saturation diving takes advantage of this by providing a means for divers to remain at depth pressure for days or weeks.

Saturation diving is associated with aseptic bone necrosis, although it is not yet known if all divers are affected or only especially sensitive ones.

Saturation diving divers are frequently troubled by superficial infections such as skin rashes, otitis externa and athlete's foot, which occur during and after saturation exposures.

Saturation diving allows professional divers to live and work at pressures greater than 50 msw for days or weeks at a time, though lower pressures have been used for scientific work from underwater habitats.

The Saturation diving team is compressed to the working pressure only once, at the beginning of the work period, and decompressed to surface pressure once, after the entire work period of days or weeks.

Saturation diving team requires at the minimum the following personnel:.

The Saturation diving bell is the elevator or lift that transfers divers from the system to the work site.

At the completion of work or a mission, the saturation diving team is decompressed gradually back to atmospheric pressure by the slow venting of system pressure, at an average of 15 metres to 30 metres per day.

Divers use surface supplied umbilical Saturation diving equipment, utilizing deep Saturation diving breathing gas, such as helium and oxygen mixtures, stored in large capacity, high pressure cylinders.

Saturation diving took 43 days to complete the record experimental dive, where a hydrogen–helium–oxygen gas mixture was used as breathing gas.

Training of saturation divers generally takes place at commercial diving schools registered to train saturation divers, and having the required infrastructure and equipment.

Purpose of saturation diving is to extend the useful working time for dives without increasing the exposure to risk of decompression sickness.

Saturation diving was able to return to the workplace using his bailout set, so was easily found by an ROV from the ship, but his bailout gas was insufficient for the time it took to get the ship back on position for a rescue attempt from the bell.