Saturation Diving Training

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xtina

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I'm currently doing my recreational divemasters with PADI - but would rather work as a commercial diver. Unfortunately I've been unable to find information on training as a saturation diver. Can anyone help with this? I live in New Zealand, but am willing to travel to train.
 
Hello xtina:

We are way out of Dr. Deco’s league when it comes to inquiries concerning commercial diving, especially in New Zealand. A search of the WWW gives one example of a company called "Dive Bell" in Queensland Australia, but I have no personal knowledge of this group.

Saturation diving was a large part of commercial diving when considerable work was being performed in oil recovery in the deep ocean. Today less of this is being done, and the need for commercial divers is reduced. It is a function of the price of oil.

Possible some of our FORUM readers will be able to answer this query with their own personal experiences in this area.
 
I personally attended the Ocean Corporation in Houston, TX. They did not have a saturation facility at the time, though they may have one now. I am told that there is a facility on the west coast that does have a saturation setup.

However, before you decide that you want to be a saturation diver, there are a few things you may want to consider.

First, in my experience noone comes out of school and goes directly to saturation diving. First you'll spend a year or two as a dive tender learning the ropes. Then you'll spend a minimum of a couple more years as a surface diver. Then you may or may not get on with a company that does sat dives, and if you do, you may or may not wind up doing sat dives.

Now the first part of the job, Tending, washes out about half the people who go into it. It is a dirty thankless job. The pay sucks, it's not uncommon to put in 36 hour days, and not un heard of to put in 72 hour days. You'll be covered in saltwater and sand for days on end, and if someone get's hurt on a job, 9 times out of ten it will be a tender. And then reguardless of fault, the tender will get blamed for anything that goes wrong. You'll rarely get to dive because the competition for depth pay is pretty fierce. And when you do get to dive, forget about looking at fish, you're going to be looking straight at mud and working in black water like you've never thought of.

It's a job straight from hell, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy.

I loved being a commercial diver. I loved being a tender even. I miss it now that I'm out. I gues you have to be some kind of masochist to do the job.
 
Commercial diving is more of a calling than a job.

The big myth is that you are getting paid to dive.
Nobody ever paid me to dive!

They paid me to find, recover, dig, cover, dredge, inspect, clean, repair, install, remove, replace, diving was the way to get to the job site.

Today more and more work is being done by ROVs. Even a commercial diver would do well to get trained and qualified as a ROV pilot. Pilots work in nicer conditions and have longer working lifetimes than divers. Sometimes the ROV pilots will spend all night repairing the ROV and then all the next day flying it again.

In any case, the more skills you bring to the table in the begining the better. If you are a weldor who can pipefit and repair hydraulic systems then you have a leg up, throw in some electronics and your are even better.
 
pipedope:
Commercial diving is more of a calling than a job.

The big myth is that you are getting paid to dive.
Nobody ever paid me to dive!

They paid me to find, recover, dig, cover, dredge, inspect, clean, repair, install, remove, replace, diving was the way to get to the job site.

Today more and more work is being done by ROVs. Even a commercial diver would do well to get trained and qualified as a ROV pilot. Pilots work in nicer conditions and have longer working lifetimes than divers. Sometimes the ROV pilots will spend all night repairing the ROV and then all the next day flying it again.

In any case, the more skills you bring to the table in the begining the better. If you are a weldor who can pipefit and repair hydraulic systems then you have a leg up, throw in some electronics and your are even better.
Roger that...

Should we tell him the big myth of commercial diving now?

If you want to make money diving, give up the dreams of blue water. Diving deep is a sucker's bet, everyone wants to do it, and on the rare occasion that you are working midwater in blue water, it is kinda neat. Not that you have much time to look arround, but collecting Spineys can be it's own reward.

If you wanna make money, go inland. Those penetration dives in 5 feet of water can pay a fortune. I knew one guy that made $54,000 for one inspection dive. Now I'll say he did earn it, as he went a half a mile up a pipe to do it, and even under 5' of water if something goes wrong, he's pretty much had it. But he then took a month off and went back and did the pipe sitting next to it. This is an extreme case, but I'll take penetration over depth any day.
 
I have a few thousand dives of less than 10' depth.

Anybody care to speculate how many miles of stormwater drain pipes there are in FL?

Don't even ask how many miles I have traveled in pipes. :D

Why do you think I am called 'pipedope'?????

Besides, if the standard inland work is not exciting enough you can specialize in contaminated water and/or potable water diving.
 

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