Operating Method
Commonly, saturation diving allows professional divers to live and work at pressures greater than 50msw (160fsw) for days or weeks at a time. This type of diving allows for greater economy of work and enhanced safety for the divers. After working in the water, they rest and live in a dry pressurized habitat on or connected to a diving support vessel, oil platform or other floating work station, at approximately the same pressure as the work depth. The diving team is compressed to the working pressure only once, at the beginning of the work period, and decompressed to surface pressure once, after the entire work period of days or weeks.
Increased use of underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROV's) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV's) for routine or planned tasks means that saturation dives are becoming less common, though complicated underwater tasks requiring complex manual actions remain the preserve of the deep-sea saturation diver.
Read more about this topic: Saturation Diving
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