|
A friend recently introduced me to Pat Gilmore
who is a commercial diving
supervisor in the Gulf of Persia. I asked him a bit about his job. Here's what he
said: Well
in reply to your questions, we are a DSV (Diving Support vessel) called the Pacific
Claymore. We are situated in the middle of
the Persian Gulf in an Oil Field called Fateh which is
80 miles offshore
near the Iranian/Abudabi border. The water
depths in this region varies from 120ft minimum to about 220ft max depending on
which part of the field we are working in. The number of divers
we require depends on what type of jobs we are doing but for our general
day to day work of inspections and subsea maintenance we have
only 5 regular divers who have been on this contract for the
past 15 years. We get extra personnel
in if we have any large
projects like for example a pipeline supplying fuel gas to
drive offshore gas turbines had recently been damaged by a
vessel working in the area. This is a critical pipeline and
demands high priority. For the job I had 16 divers working around the clock.
We use air for dives down to 200ft but only for quick inspections
otherwise we use a HELIOX mix 84/16% which gives us a
bottom time of 100mins. We switch to a NITROX mix of 50/50% at
90ft and continue to breath that mix for the duration of the
in water decompression. This takes about 70mins at 40 ft. the diver will
be on his last in water stop before surfacing and will
transfer into the decompression chamber for his surface deco.
We re-compress to 5Oft on 100% oxygen breathing from a BIB
mask inside the chamber. The atmosphere in the chamber is air. He will
stay in the chamber for up to 4 hrs. This type of diving is
called surface gas diving and the decompression tables are called
table ALPHA. A surface interval of 24hrs is a must before
any type of diving is allowed after any surface gas dive operations.
The water here is warm to hot, average temp 80 degrees F.
The marine
life here is abundant. There are many types of sharks, sizes average 6-8ft,
whale
sharks 25-30ft, turtles leather backs 6ft, many sea snakes,
scorpion fish, lion fish, giant rays, dolphins & just
about every type of fish mentionable.
We have to comply with all the HSE
standards and company policy is we have to do a Risk
Assessments
prior to any jobs being done. Commercial
divers have to wear a harness for emergency recovery with D
rings for a diver recovery hoist to be attached in the event of
an unconscious diver.
 If
any members have questions for Pat please send them to me and
I will try to grab some of his time.
Paul Field.
|
Click the images below
for a larger view.
Dive support vessel similar to the Pacific
Claymore.
On Deck
Inside the Zodiac showing the Surface Gas
pipes
Gas control and monitoring
Kirby Morgan equipment
Another shot in the Zodiac.
|
