![]() Image Credit: FirstPrinciples/Wikimedia Commons A diagram of the chambers attached to the diving bell, with the position of the divers and tenders (D and T, respectively). Chamber 2 was connected to the diving bell by a trunk, which the bell would attach to and be secured by a clamp operated by two diving tenders, William Crammond and Martin Saunders. The chambers consisted of chamber 1, in which Edwin Coward and Roy Lucas were resting, and chamber 2, where Bjørn Bergersen and Truls Hellevik were entering after their work. It was a routine procedure on the Byford Dolphin oil rig on Saturday, November 5, 1983, in which four divers were returning from a dive and exiting the diving bell into their compressed living chambers. The Byford Dolphin Explosive Decompression Accident The most infamous example of this is the Byford Dolphin accid ent. ![]() However, whilst saturation diving is safer than it has ever been, one wrong move and the implications are deadly. Breathing the specialized mixture causes chills throughout their body due to the helium, and there is an array of medical complications that can arise from long-term exposure to harsh depths, alongside an almost constant risk of death. A number of strict regulations are enforced to minimize the risks of these issues, from mandatory diving times to forced time-off. Grouped together, these risks result in saturation diving becoming one of the most specialized jobs in the world, with just 336 people employed in this role in 2015 in the US. Life is exhausting, claustrophobic, and intense for these divers. Once they are saturated, they will stay under intense pressure and breathe a mixture of oxygen and helium for weeks, until their tour of duty is over and they can be decompressed. These divers leave the safety of dry land and enter pressurized living quarters, after which they are transferred down to an underwater habitat via a diving bell. Saturation diving is a diving technique that involves staying under pressure for so long that all your bodily tissues become in equilibrium with the inert gases in the breathing mixture (either helium or nitrogen), and then staying under that pressure for long periods of time.
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