🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BxzCto.591@news.udel.edu>, jimwelch@ravel.udel.edu (James Miller Welch) writes:
|> 
|> On a side note to the discussion on diving....
|> The problem with deep dives is that you have so little time on the bottom
|> that it's difficult to get much done.  A 130 foot dive from the surface
|> gives you about 5 minutes bottom time without a decompression stop, and
|> not much more even with decompression.

As you might imagine, this is a rather serious problem for the men who
check and mend the underwater structures in the UK sector of the North
Sea.

|>   One solution to this problem for people who need to work at depth (e.g.
|> marine scientists running experiments) was used for several years down in
|> St.Croix (pre-Hugo).  There was an underwater living space at about 50
|> feet depth and scientists would live there for a week while conducting
|> experiments. [...]

The North Sea approach to this problem is to have "saturation
chambers" on the support vessels; the divers are taken thence into the
little steel balls and dive from them.

|>                                  Of course, this requires a lot of outside
|> assistance, ferrying down new full air tanks, [...]

Being as how the saturation is done on the surface, support is
presumably rather easier.  Which is just as well, since the conditions
in the North Sea can be atrocious.

|>                                            The kicker is that after this,
|> you can't fly for 2 days or so, so you're trapped on a Caribbean isle for
|> a couple of days with doctor's orders to relax and take it easy!!

No such luck for the North Sea divers.  Aberdeen _does_ have its
charms (to the truly discerning), but lounging about on sunny beaches
is not something one normally associates with that area.
--
Robin (come back John Drummond) Fairbairns       rf@cl.cam.ac.uk
U of Cambridge Computer Lab, Pembroke St, Cambridge  CB2 3QG, UK
"They had twelve years to lay in wait for us" - Bush supporter on Nov 4