Spiralling demand for DEEP SEA DIVERS

With offshore oil exploration and production set to intensify, a huge demand for deep sea divers, who inspect, maintain and repair sub-sea installations, is on the cards

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The workplace is deep underwater; the hours long requiring hanging by an umbilical cordlike link which supplies life-giving oxygen, and a connection with the world above. That’s perhaps why deep or sub-sea divers are a small minority. It’s also why this vocation is offbeat, adventurous and financially rewarding.

Broadly speaking, sub-sea divers are of two types — air divers and saturation divers — with both categories trained to inspect, maintain and repair undersea installations which suffer heavy corrosion due to sea-water salinity. The differentiator is that air divers dive up to 50 metres and lodge in cabins after their shifts. Saturation divers plunge to greater depths and remain in special saturation chambers for the entire operation. The biggest employer of sub-sea divers is the offshore oil and gas industry.

As a training regime for deep sea office, every diver needs to acclimatise to the pressure he will be exposed to. Therefore, before a dive he is placed in a sealed saturation or ‘sat’ chamber aboard a ship in which the pressure is gradually increased to match the levels he will be diving to, a process which can take up to three days. Subsequently, the diver’s work begins underwater after he descends to the predetermined level in a diving bell. Saturation divers usually spend eight hours underwater per shift, before returning to the sat chamber to gradually decompress.

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