Commercial Diving in the Gulf of Persia
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.
Pat Gilmore and Paul Field
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.
Pat Gilmore and Paul Field