Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time about the work I used to do in the diving business. Although I worked for several different companies during those years the images below are from one company in particular. It’s name was Santa Fe Engineering and Construction and I worked in the Diving Division as a Systems Engineer and a Dive Controller. The company is no longer in business under that name as far as I know because it was bought out and absorbed by some huge offshore company in Dubai in the middle east. That put me out of a job but it was no big deal at the time because I had been offered a better job with another company.
The first picture is a view of one side of the diving complex with the diver’s living quarters (steel pressure chambers) underneath and the diving bell being hoisted over the side into the water in the Gulf of Mexico. The arrow in the photo is pointing to me watching the hull clearance as it’s lowered down. The divers lived in the system for up to 30 days at a time where they stayed under constant pressure equal to the water depth we were working in. This allowed them to save all of their decompression to prevent the bends until the end of the job. This also allowed them to stay underwater using the diving bell for up to 8 hours at a time where they worked in shifts. Notice the 20,000 pound anchor on the vessels deck in the foreground, there were eight of these used to stabilize and hold the position of the ship we were on.
Two divers could ride to the sea floor in the diving bell at one time where one would go outside and work for 4 hours and the other one would stay inside to tend the hose and the diving bell controls, then they would swap out for 4 more hours before returning to the surface. Then, 2 more divers would transfer into the bell and they would go to the seafloor to continue the work. This type of diving was called “total saturation” and allowed underwater work to be done around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Up to 8 divers could live inside the system at one time. The quarters were extremely cramped, but the divers pay was extremely high.
Total saturation meant that the divers body tissues could absorb no more gases no matter how much longer they stayed down, allowing a fixed amount of decompression at the completion of the job. Sometimes it took to up 3 days of slowly releasing the pressure in the chambers before the divers could safely emerge from the system. It was not very much unlike going into outer space actually, if the diving system were to become quickly depressurized the end result would be deadly, sort of like losing cabin pressure in a space capsule.
This next photo shows the back side of the system and most of it’s auxiliary equipment, including hydraulic power units, air compressors, an emergency chamber, breathing gas bottles and much more and also the control room sitting on top. That’s the small white building with the 2 rear access hatches open. Again the arrow in the photo is pointing at me. That’s an offshore oil drilling platform off in the distance
It took a shitload of equipment and personnel to put men on the bottom to do this type of work where only one man could work at a time. Although the vessel we were on was capable of doing many different roles, when diving was going on the entire crew of up to 300 men did nothing but support for that one task including technicians, mechanics, cooks, clerks, welders and riggers.
Below is a photo of the inside of the control room where 2 dive controllers would sit and converse with the divers on the bottom and in the living quarters. They had a lot of responsibilty because they had to monitor the divers environment pressure and control the mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and other gases in the divers breathing air. They also had closed circuit tv monitors and specialized radio equipment. You can see part of the diving bell thru the window.
The job that these photos were taken from was actually the trial runs for this particular diving system as it had just been completed construction. Everything had to be thoroughly tested on the job site before it could be certified safe to use as life support capable. At this point in my career I didn’t normally work offshore very much, not like I had used to. I was now only going out for initial trial runs because I was in charge of construction of the control rooms and the final asembly of all the major components. That was all done inshore at the companies main base where we completed 5 of these multi-million dollar systems. They were capable of being broken down into it’s smaller components and then reassembled and used at almost any location around the world.
Most often they were used in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and in the middle east but I was always on call to go wherever they were to trouble shoot or help with technical problems that may come up. I loved doing this type of work, it was actually a lot of fun and the pay was damn good too. Not to mention traveling to lots of cool places. One job I was on I spent over a year in Europe. Eventually, after 12 years I did get sick of it and after missing dozens of family holidays and spending time at home with friends I gave it up.
Hope you guys are having a good weekend! The N.O. Jazz Fest started yesterday and I’m still trying to decide if I’m going to go or not. If I do, I’ll certainly get some photos and video to post!
Does anyone else dislike Nancy Grace on CNN as much as I do? She is very irritating, just the sound of her indignant voice is enough to make me go change the channel. I hate the way she badgers people on the air, people that are just witnesses to her story and are trying to be helpful. She treats them like dirt. One night she was questioning someone that had a stutter and she actually mocked his stuttering! She acts as though everyone she talks to on air is her own personal doormat. By the way I found that photo on the ‘net, it’s not one that I made up, LOL.
