Who dives to 600 feet?

[DougK]

There is an ad for regulators in this month's Scuba Diving magazine for Poseidon regulators. Under one of the regs it says approved for 600 feet.

I am in my first year of diving so I only have OW certification. However, I have not even heard people talking about going to these depths.

Can someone give me a primer on how or when someone would go this deep? Is this commerical? Navy? etc. diving???

 

[carbon]

I don't know, but whoever dives to 600 feet can use my watch. It too is rated to 600 feet.

Carbon

 

[teknitroxdiver]

First off, the 600 foot "approval" means that it will deliver air at that depth, which is basically just to impress people who like big numbers.

Mostly it's just commercial divers doing things like maintaining oil rigs and laying pipeline that go that deep, and I imagine the navy has the ability to. However, that kind of work is being taken over by ROVs now.

 

[dwright]

I don't know there is that guy that dove the Edmund Fitzgerald in about 600 ffw...

 

[Mako Mark]

I have a friend that has done a dive to that depth, but you actually get to the world record depth type of level, and that is generally just plain silly for all but a few.

Open circuit divers have dived to depths of over 1000 feet now, commercial divers go deeper, but they would be very unlikely to use a standard type reg, they generally use hard hats and umbilical.

 

[eod]

Well, I guess it makes people safe to know that their regulator works fine at more than four times the depth they want to dive to.

 

[DeepSeaDan]

Well, I guess it makes people safe to know that their regulator works fine at more than four times the depth they want to dive to.

Just a wee story for ya's...

I used to dive to great depth commercially - my deepest was 730'. Anyway, to do this economically & efficiently, deepsea divers "saturate" to their working depth & live under pressure for often weeks at a time. We breathe HeO2 at such depths, & in my early days, I was the beneficiary of some sage advice from a veteran sat. diver - he told me to be sure & unscrew the time-set pin on my Seiko diving watch ( rated for 150 meters ) to allow chamber atmosphere into the watch housing during decent to working depth; & to be especially sure that I remembered to unscrew it again on the ascent from depth, to allow the pressureized watch to "decompress"...

I followed his advice to the letter on my first sat. to 730'. We lived under pressure for 29 days, then began a slow, 5.5 day ascent back to atmospheric pressure. All went well & 4 hours after surfacing, we were in the Supervisor's cabin debriefing the just-completed job. My sat. buddy, who had the same watch as I did, was standing with his arms folded across his chest when all at once, his watch literally exploded! Springs, gears, & other assorted timepiece hardware flew in every direction. When we got back to our feet, my buddy's watch was now nothing more than an empty housing!

Seems he remembered to unscrew the pin for the trip down, but forgot all about do ing the same for the trip up!

( if all this is incomprehensible, check out www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?threadid=825 )

Regards,
D.S.D.

 

[cool_hardware52]

Just a wee story for ya's...

I used to dive to great depth commercially - my deepest was 730'. Anyway, to do this economically & efficiently, deepsea divers "saturate" to their working depth & live under pressure for often weeks at a time. We breathe HeO2 at such depths, & in my early days, I was the beneficiary of some sage advice from a veteran sat. diver - he told me to be sure & unscrew the time-set pin on my Seiko diving watch ( rated for 150 meters ) to allow chamber atmosphere into the watch housing during decent to working depth; & to be especially sure that I remembered to unscrew it again on the ascent from depth, to allow the pressureized watch to "decompress"...

I followed his advice to the letter on my first sat. to 730'. We lived under pressure for 29 days, then began a slow, 5.5 day ascent back to atmospheric pressure. All went well & 4 hours after surfacing, we were in the Supervisor's cabin debriefing the just-completed job. My sat. buddy, who had the same watch as I did, was standing with his arms folded across his chest when all at once, his watch literally exploded! Springs, gears, & other assorted timepiece hardware flew in every direction. When we got back to our feet, my buddy's watch was now nothing more than an empty housing!

Seems he remembered to unscrew the pin for the trip down, but forgot all about do ing the same for the trip up!

( if all this is incomprehensible, check out www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?threadid=825 )

Regards,
D.S.D.

Love that watch story. Thanks for sharing. I recently had the good fourtune to attend the awards banquet for the Historical Diving Society, wow, what an impressive group of folks. The commercial diving world is kinda beyond belief if your not exposed to it.

I'm signed up to try a Mark V & dress in Dec. Shallow water, just for fun, can't wait. Just being exposed to that hardware provides some small taste of what commercial divers experience daily.



Regards,



Tobin

 

[emtdan]

I would assume that they test all of that kind of equipment in a chamber. They are able to show that it can stand the pressure for a short ammt of time.

ALso, for non diving products, they will also say "Water resistant to 200 ATM" trying to sound technical, but also shilelding from liability by saying "resistant".

 

[Jester]

An exploding watch.........did anyone get hurt? I imagine the tiny parts on the inside of a watch moving at whatever speed the "explosion" caused could do some significant damage!