The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver(atlasobscura.com) |
The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver(atlasobscura.com) |
not as dangerous as the article says. at least not the diving part. most of the injuries are people mishandling high-pressure systems (valves, plumbing), electrical hazards (water+electricity), gas leaks, burns ... basically anything that can go wrong on construction sites, but only you're out at sea exposed to the elements. those few times that accidents do happen with divers in a saturation chambers / diving bell (aka "in the bin") it's cited for decades. people are naturally scared of darkness, deep water. so when accidents do happen it makes for a gripping story told over and over. how else to pass time when you're waiting on the weather to get better on a rocky boat.
what's pretty cool is the survival training, e.g. practice escaping from a sinking helicopter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Z8sGRje90 I have seen big tough man in their 40ies panic and in tears trying to stay calm while the sinking helicopter fully floods, and you can't open the doors until the cabin is fully flooded.
Another good one: part of the course is simulation of a burning rig. they lock you into a warehouse heated to around 60-70°C breathing air with a gas-mask, full body safety clothes (the heat alone can make you panic), then you have to navigate through a metal maze with a buddy (you're linked to your sobbing partner over radio-comms), and it's pitch black. You are only allowed to get out together and if one of you it bucks up you start over. Fantastic character building and understanding your mental limits.
Sometimes I sit in front of my code thinking why did I get out of this job. I fought so hard to get there and gave it all up for computers & code. The truth is that most of the time offshore life is quite boring. Guess my boredom with software made me go into IoT since I get to mess with physical systems again.
He is 3 on, 2 off or 2 on, 3 off the rig. While I’m back in the office he can continue to sail indefinitely. You can accomplish so much with a job that gives you plenty of time off every month.
It depends on you benchmark, but people think of police officer as a dangerous job and they mostly die in car accidents.
Sounds... dangerous.
> [...] Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the 60 centimetres (24 in) diameter opening created by the jammed interior trunk door by escaping air and violently dismembered, including bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which further resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section later being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.
If someone mentions pressurized gas or liquid, someone will say pressurized gas is dangerous (duh, but it depends on the pressure and the volume), someone else linking the Wikipedia page on the Byford Dolphin accident, and/or someone will link a training video on pressure differential and/or someone will like a web-page on hydraulic injection and then it devolving into virtue signaling about safety around high pressure things.
(Former professional diver but I never did North Sea etc)
I was surprised on looking into it more that we're really just winging it algorithmically + safety margins, based on research done in the 60s. The empirical research basically consisted of the Navy et al. throwing people in at depth, and seeing what got them "bent".
Everybody's physiology is different though, and there are a large number of factors over-and-above that which affect whether you'll suffer Decompress Sickness (DCS).
Whilst there have been some iterations on Bühlmann[3] such as VPM-B[4] (which is based on bubble diameter vs. tissue compartment loading), the field is still lacking IMHO.
Not really through any fault of their own, it's just very difficult/expensive to peer into the body whilst they're down there to see what's going on, and it seems we'd need a large sample size due to individual physiology playing a part. Still, the algos seem to work... most of the time. Just don't drink too much alcohol, sleep well, hydrate. And do your stops! :)
Interestingly, saturation divers / Navy generally don't use a computer as the divemaster singularly plans the dives for the group with massive safety margins. As they're already saturated, they're generally not doing stops "outside" in the wet anyway. If they do have a computer, it will even have the tables/algos removed from it.
[1] https://heinrichsweikamp.com/
[2] https://bitbucket.org/heinrichsweikamp/ostc4/wiki/Home
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BChlmann_decompression_al...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_computer#Algorithms
Edit: Formatting
It also included being compressed in the "pot" down to 50m and getting narked to hell. Any UK bods fancy trying the experience lookup "York Diver Training".
So...it's a pretty good living, but it's not a good life unless you just really love diving. But, even then, I can't imagine this is the fun kind of diving. Then again, as with most high dollar specialist industries, someone ambitious could probably work in it for a few years and then start a company and become management/sales/support for a team of lower ranking folks who do the hard work of actually diving. That's common in a lot of jobs that are hard on your body, like construction.
My personal opinion is that if you’re going to make statements like this you should back them up.
As a counter example, being a police officer would I imagine not be considered the safest of jobs. But 30% of police officers in the UK are women, and the number is steadily rising:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-workforce-...
Not only that but you can make the money you are not spending "work" for you to generate even more money.
It isn't particularly dangerous in the UK. There were no officers killed in the line of duty in 2016, 2014, 2011, 2010 and 2008. Police officers have a relatively high risk of being the victim of an assault, but they're far less likely to be killed or seriously injured at work than workers in agriculture, construction, civil engineering, motor vehicle repair or waste management.
Why is this almost always a male occupation? Are women systematically excluded?
However, I’m not making any strong assertion one way or the other. The parent I was replying to effective said “it’s because men and women are different” without providing any evidence whatsoever.
It's been a while since I bought my last dive computer, but looking at the spec for the Leonardo, it looks okay. Personally I'd prefer one that includes a stop timer, but that's not a show stopper. The ability to download your dives to a PC is a good one to have. Have a chat with your instructors and see what they use and why. Enjoy your diving and keep blowing them bubbles!
As such, nitrox’s purpose isn’t to increase depth. It’s actually used to increase bottom time (at a loss of max depth) without needing decompression. You get this increased bottom time due to lower amounts of nitrogen.
I’ve logged hundreds of nitrox dives from 28% - 60% oxygen levels, but never bit the bullet and gotten into more advanced air mixtures like Trimix. Trimix and other specialty blends are hard to get air fills for at the places I most commonly dive, so I keep pushing it off.
Does it? Or does it increase by one atmosphere every 10m?
When you get to technical dives requiring Trimix, one often dives with several different gasses. The gas you breathe at the deepest point of the dive would be toxic if you were to breathe it at a shallower depth.
- Oxygen 0-20 ft
- Nitrox in-between depending on % oxygen
- Air 0-200 ft
- Trimix 0-250 ft
- Hypoxic Trimix up to 500 ft, minimum depending on % oxygen
Take a tribe made of 10 men and 10 women, each women give birth to 4 kids during their life. You need 8 people for a very dangerous task. Are you going to send men or women? If you send 8 men and they all die, you are left with 10 women and 2 men. The two men can impregnate all the women and you have 40 kids for the next generation. The tribe will soon recover. On the other hand if 8 women die, there will be only 8 kids for the next generation, which is a much bigger hit.
That women are more risk adverse is only natural, and it is indeed the case. In fact, it maye be the most significant non-physical difference between men and women.
As for women possibly being better saturation divers, I don't know. After all, they do pretty well in space, they even seem to have some biological advantage. However, these divers are not just divers, they are also construction workers, and physical strength is important, an area where men have the advantage.
Otherwise, this could just as easily be a social adaptation (and if we are seeking equality in our society, which should try and address it).
Testosterone is strongly linked to aggression as well as financial/physical risk taking, so part of the difference between sexes is expected on that alone. [1][2]
The evolution of risk taking is actively researched [3], and we see pretty consistent sex based differences across most species.
On an individual level, women who want to take these high risk physical jobs should clearly have equal opportunity to do so. We're just unlikely to ever hit 50/50.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11206
[2] https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_0044...
To paraphrase real world office debates, basically man dying after they did dangerous "at least knew what he did it for" while woman "stupid did not knew the risk". Judgement without knowing details in both cases. I havent seen dumb female death framed in terms of bravery, but I have seen dum male death framed that way. (This difference likely hurts men more then women imo, most paid jobs are actually safe)
Imo, neither that man nor that women meant to be death.
The first (nature) paper appears to show that in market traders increased levels of testosterone result in more risk taking.
The third is mostly about fish and other animals, and doesn’t seem hugely relevant (though it’s interesting).
The second seems like the most interesting (MIT press article). They look at risk taking in adolescents. The paper seems to show that testosterone is linked to risk taking in males, but increased (natural) testosterone in females didn’t seem to show much increase in risk taking.
Overall, boys had very slightly riskier behavior than females. From the graphs the error bars are pretty big and the difference in risky behavior is quite small.
The difference doesn’t seem big enough that it would result in skewed gender ratios in jobs for example.
So, if this is well established in the literature, I’d expect to see better results than this. Are there papers that more really show that males are more prone to risky behavior and that this has a biological, rather than social basis?