Light "Commercial" Diving

[ManBearPig]

I am a marine surveyor and thus have to survey various types of vessels and marine facilities. Sometimes there is a need to hire divers to review a hull or running gear without hauling the vessel. Heres my question, what level of dive education do I need to do an occasional dive on a ship or dock to take some pics without having to pay a full blown commercial diver? I have done ships husbandry diving in college, but as I get older, and more educated as a diver, I am becoming way more conservative. Currently I have an advanced and nitrox cert. While there are commercial dive schools, they seem way more indepth than I need. I cannot see going below 50 feet, and would not need to communicate with the surface or anything, so no hard hat diving. Just scuba.

 

[emoreira]

Just a few thoughts to your comments.
First you should do "solo" diving, because you are doing the surveys. Perhaps, having a dive buddy is the best way, but as you are working, a dive buddy means extra cost. An on-land supporter should be required.
Secondly, doing surveys in harbours, normaly means low visibility and/or poluted waters, this means integral dry suit and full head mask or helmet.
Perhaps you can also evaluate a Narguille setup (air supply from surface with a looong hose).
Furthermore, think about the insurance needed to do work underwater. If you are doing scuba diving for pleasure, you are the one that risks your life. If you are working under a contract with someone to do a survey, you have a responsibility with the one that hired you and he is also responsible for the one doing the work under water, who should have all the required training and certifications to do that work.

 

[Belmont]

What he said.
There is way more to it than it looks, best to let the job to the pros.

 

[Wetsuit 4 life]

You could try looking in to a Commercial Scuba program

 

[SurDo2]

Don't kill yourself in the process of trying to save a few bucks...

 

[Thalassamania]

You are going to dive in harbors and such so you will need something along the lines of a Superlight with a Viking Suit and SL style neck dam. Now I have used exactly that gear in a scuba mode, but it works much better surface supplied, which means, at a minimum something along the lines of an AMRON console, a four member umbilical, and four to eight bottles topside with an adjustable regulator. To make all the work efficiently you are now looking at a crew of four: diver, standby diver, tender and operation supervisor. Suddenly you've become a commercial diving company.

A small ROV might work better for you.

 

[Gilldiver]

If all you are doing is visual inspections and not acctualy doing replacements etc a small ROV can work real well. It will allow you to work in all weather and waters without getting a real nasty ear infection.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/training-practices-equipment/255941-videoray-rov.html

 

[DeepSeaDan]

I am a marine surveyor and thus have to survey various types of vessels and marine facilities. Sometimes there is a need to hire divers to review a hull or running gear without hauling the vessel. Heres my question, what level of dive education do I need to do an occasional dive on a ship or dock to take some pics without having to pay a full blown commercial diver? I have done ships husbandry diving in college, but as I get older, and more educated as a diver, I am becoming way more conservative. Currently I have an advanced and nitrox cert. While there are commercial dive schools, they seem way more indepth than I need. I cannot see going below 50 feet, and would not need to communicate with the surface or anything, so no hard hat diving. Just scuba.

...a subject I haved opined on many, many times on this board. Sigh.

Listen my friend, there are federal regulations regarding working u/w, and these regs. were written for a reason, that being that folks have died doing u/w work when they lacked the needed training, equipment, personnel etc. I would wager that many of those dearly departed did what they did for the same reasons you are citing. The thing of it is, you could perform the work you describe on scuba & perhaps get away with it unscathed every time you did it. Trouble is, our ol' nemesis "Murphy" is always lurking about, poised to toss a spanner into the works. It is in those moments that you may very well pay a steep price for cutting some corners. I say this from the perspective of someone that has done alot of commercial construction, inspection & oilfield diving. I also have the perspective of a professional First Responder, and in that career I have become utterly convivnced that anything that can happen will, & by the time I hang up my uniform, I won't near have seen it all.

If you want, I can link you to some regretable incidents, & the testamonials of bereaved family members who've lost a loved one in circumstances similar to the risk you're describing. These types of tragedies seem to repeat themselves over & over again.

It's your call, mate.

Regards,
DSD

 

[Water Monkey]

I have been doing light commercial diving and salvage for the last ten years. There is no right or wrong gear to do it with. Some stuff works better than others but I use pretty much the same gear everyone uses for recreational diving. You don’t have to spend seven months in a commercial dive school to do an underwater hull survey. As long as you don’t have employees doing the diving for you, you can do pretty much what ever you want. Once you hire an employee to dive for you then look out, it’s a huge can of worms. All that said I have two pieces of advice one is, if you’re going to be touching any hulls buy a full face mask and use it. If you don’t you’re basically going to be eating poisonous paint. The other more important point is to know your limits and dive within them. Good luck

 

[muddiver]

If you dive the vessel alone and you do not hire anyone to assist you, then you do not fall under the OSHA regulations on Commercial Diving because you are a sole proprietor.

Doing so opens you to flat-out denial of insurance compensation for medical, disability or death benifits because you are diving alone which is contrary to the basic safe diving practices of most scuba certification agencies. Plus it is just not safe to dive without anyone knowing where you are. I would reccomend you buy and read SDI's Solo Diver manual to help make yourself safer.

Once you hire someone to dive with you the OSHA regulations apply and you are now a full-blown commercial divng operation. Requires a three man team (minimum), scuba divers must be teathered unless the surface member can visually see them, surface supplied equipment requires voice communication, etc.

It also really depends on the size of vessels you are talking about, water conditions, and other factors of the job at hand.

I don't have a problem doing a solo inspection, but I have all the toys to do it the right way and with a representative from the vessel owner and a representative of the survey company, I have at least two people that can haul me out. I would still need someone trained in the procedures of running the dive station, communication the inspection findings and maintaining the divers gas supply on the surface, thus I would end up with one employee doing the tending, which defeats the Sole Proprietor concept.