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imagine working 100 meters beneath the sea a hostile place that sunlight never reaches
and where temperatures can plunge to a few degrees above freezing all your off hours are spent in a
tiny cramped metal tube breathing a mixture of gases that makes it hard for you to speak and
constantly saps heat from your body giving you a permanent chill here you can eat a meal delivered
through a tiny hatch or catch a few hours of sleep before your next shift begins and it's time once
again to plunge back into the abyss now imagine living like this for months at a time unable to
escape your little sealed world without facing a certain and gruesome death welcome to the strange
twilight world of saturation diving one of the most dangerous and well-paid jobs in the world
developed as part of the u.s navy's sealab program in the mid-1960s saturation diving is
a technique that allows humans to live and work at extreme depths for extended periods of time
specifically it's designed to overcome the danger of decompression sickness better known as the benz
as a diver breathes pressurized air at depth and nitrogen gradually becomes dissolved in
their body if they then ascend to the surface too quickly the drop in pressure can cause this
nitrogen to come out of solution and form tiny bubbles which can cause crippling joint pain
strokes paralysis and even death to avoid this diapers must descend to the surface slowly taking
decompression stops at regular intervals to allow the nitrogen to be slowly and safely expelled from
their bodies however for long deep dives like those required in the offshore oil industry
this technique becomes infeasible as divers would have to spend far more time decompressing than
working for each shift for example a dive of more than an hour below 100 meters depth would
require more than 50 hours of decompression instead in saturation diving the divers spend
their entire working shift under pressure spending their off hours in a diving chamber pressurized
to their working depth and traveling to and from the job site in a pressurized diving bell
known as a transfer capsule this practice is based on the fact that after a certain
amount of time a diver's body becomes fully saturated with nitrogen and cannot absorb any
more meaning that no matter how long they stay below the required decompression time remains the
same thus rather than making multiple dives and decompression saturation divers only decompress
once at the end of their shift greatly reducing the risk of decompression sickness the downside
is that this single decompression can take up to two weeks to complete there are also other hazards
including nitrogen narcosis a disorientating euphoria caused by breathing nitrogen at
pressure which divers describe as being similar to alcohol intoxication oxygen also becomes toxic
below around 80 meters so saturation divers must breathe trimmix a gas mixture in which much of the
oxygen is replaced with helium this comes with its own problems not only does helium alter the
human voice forcing divers to wear electronic d scramblers in order to be understood but it also
has poor thermal properties wicking away body heat and leaving divers perpetually chilled breathing
helium at depths below 300 meters can also produce severe neurological effects known as high pressure
nervous syndrome but the greatest danger in saturation diving is the high pressure environment
itself as a group of four british and norwegian divers discovered in 1983 in a gruesome event
known as the biford dolphin accident bifur dolphin was a semi-submersible offshore oil rig built by
akker engineering of oslo in 1974. weighing 3 000 tons and manned by a crew of 100 it was
capable of drilling in waters up to 460 meters in depth to allow construction and maintenance
of the wellhead at these depths the rig was equipped with a sophisticated saturation diving
system built by french firm comex on november 5th 1983 the rig was drilling in the frig gas field
in the norwegian sector of the north sea at 4 am british divers edwin coward and roy lucas were
resting in the dive chamber while norwegian drivers jean bergenson and charles halvick were
returning from their shift in the transfer capsule the capsule was hoisted from the water and docked
to the dive chamber by diving tenders william crammond and martin saunders allowing bergerson
and helvik to climb through a short trunk to join coward and lucas the normal procedure was for the
divers to first seal off the trunk and isolate the chamber so tenders could depressurize the
capsule and detach it from the airlock but before hellevic could close the chamber hatch william
kramend released the clamp securing the capsule to the trunk the results were immediate and horrific
the capsule violently decompressed and blasted away from the trunk killing crammond and severely
injuring saunders while inside the chamber the pressure dropped instantaneously from nine
atmospheres to one in an instant helovik crouching in the trunk was blown apart scattering body parts
across the rig deck one observer described finding his liver complete as if dissected out of the body
while part of his spine was found 10 meters above the chamber on the rig derrick the other divers in
the chamber fed little better autopsies of coward lucas and bergenson revealed lumps of white fat
clogging their arteries and veins proteins which had cooked and precipitated as their blood flash
boiled mercifully all four divers are believed to have died instantly and painlessly a subsequent
investigation concluded that the accident was caused by human error as william cramen was killed
in the incident it's not known why he released the clamp before the pressure hatch was closed
investigators surmised that a combination of fatigue and deck noise may have led to
a fatal miscommunication however another key factor was the saturation diving system itself
which despite recommendations from norwegian oil and gas regulated dnv had not been fitted with
any interlocks pressure gauges or other safety features to prevent the diving chamber from
being disconnected while pressurized this fault in the equipment was not mentioned in the official
accident report and as such the families of the divers killed received no financial compensation
believing the investigation to be a cover-up the families formed the north sea divers alliance
which finally succeeded in suing the norwegian government and obtaining a settlement in 2008
25 years after the accident the bifur dolphin rig is still in operation currently on contract with
british petroleum and saturation diving continues to be widely used in the offshore oil industry
consistently ranking among the most dangerous but well-paid jobs in the world with
many divers receiving up to 1 400 us dollars per day while safety measures and accident rates have
improved significantly since 1983 the bifur dolphin incident stands as a stark reminder
of the dangers that always come with living and working in extreme environments so i'm
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