![]() ![]() So, a labor model called " saturation diving" became popular with the oil companies. Those divers need to be able to work for hours and not spend days decompressing afterwards. The pitch of the divers' voices bends upward, like teenagers inhaling the gas in a balloon.įor serious commercial work, though, even these little human body hacks don't cut it. Generally speaking, they end up breathing a variant of heliox that's 90 percent helium and 10 percent oxygen. Divers substitute helium for nitrogen and most of the oxygen. It can cause symptoms from twitchiness to full-blown seizures.īoth these problems can be mitigated by the use of more exotic gas mixes than air. Second, oxygen becomes toxic at lower depths, too. In dark cold water, it can be frightening, very frightening." Simply put: If one is breathing air, the brain begins to stop working below 130 feet. "In warm clear water, it can be euphoric. "You end up feeling basically drunk," one diver told me. First, the nitrogen makes them feel high. Two other physiological problems emerge as the divers sink into the darkness. We're talking a day, a week, or more in some cases to fully decompress. Decompressing slowly is best, and the longer and deeper the dive, the longer it takes. ![]() People learned that they have to ascend slowly, stopping for long periods of time at set depths. Those bubbles can cause pain and serious injury if they end up in the wrong place. That's fine, but as they ascend, and the gas comes back out of their blood and ligaments and liver and muscles, it can form bubbles if the divers come up too quickly. As people descend in the water, gases (mostly nitrogen) diffuse into their tissues. Beyond that range, the human body can't function normally.įirst, there is the bends. R ecreational scuba divers stop at 100 or 150 feet of depth. The divers do the dirty work: welding, laying foundations, inspecting pipes. In the 1960s, oil companies began drilling offshore in the North Sea, Gulf Coast, and in the water near California. Building drilling rigs requires divers. So, a lot more people have ventured below than have gone on orbit. Put it this way: diving below a few hundred feet into the ocean pushes the human body farther outside its natural limits and tolerances than walking in space.īut unlike space, the oceans contain resources that firms can profitably extract. Deep diving is one of the most preposterous activities in which humans engage. ![]()
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