Deep Water Disaster: Saturation Diving
Mystery of Everything · Gabriella Rozefort and Brenna Hatter
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Show Notes
Saturation divers are professional deep-sea divers who descend to depths of 500 feet (152 meters) or more to service equipment on offshore oil rigs and undersea pipelines. But unlike most commercial divers, who do a few hours of work underwater and return to the surface, saturation divers will spend up to 28 days on a single job, living in a cramped high-pressure chamber where they eat and sleep between shifts.
Pay is great for saturation divers — between $30,000 and $45,000 a month — but it's intense work in an otherworldly and claustrophobic environment. And it can be dangerous. In 1983, four saturation divers and one crew member were killed in a gruesome accident aboard a Norwegian-operated oil rig called the Byford Dolphin.
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