Aquanaut Answers Reddit Questions (r/IAmA)

this ama is held by this doggo i'm a saturation diver aquanaut who has spent 30 days under 778 feet of water ask me anything i've been working as a commercial diver for 13 years i'm hosting this summer with some help from atlas obscura who wrote about life as a saturation diver i do construction and demolition work hundreds of feet deep in the ocean and spend weeks living in a pressurized environment often a small metal tube with about five other people over the years i've been able to work for many different dive companies at locations all over the earth diving hundreds of feet below sea level involves breathing pressurized air and working at pressures of over nearly twice the pressure inside a bicycle tire while underwater we breathe in a mixture of helium oxygen and nitrogen to prevent a condition called nitrogen narcosis which mimics the feeling of being drunk gas from the compressed air we breathe dissolves into our blood and tissues so when we resurface we have to go extremely slowly or we risk bubbles of gas forming inside our bodies giving us a painful possibly fatal condition known as the bends my deepest dive was a 30-day saturation campaign at 778 feet of sea water we were installing 36 inch diameter pipeline tie in spool pieces one bolt and two end nuts weighed in at 220 lbs working in extreme conditions like saturated drivers is very dangerous and health damaging why do you think robots still cannot replace humans in such situations when a rov remote operated vehicle can put a 150 foot pipeline time together in zero visibility that's the day divers will be replaced humans have this amazing ability to see with their hands technology is very close at this point robs do all the work deeper that 1000 feet how long before hearing people talk with helium voices stops being funny never suck helium and say every curse word you know then recover from laughter at a depth like that you probably don't see much but what's illuminated by artificial light are you startled by big fish coming out of the dark all of a sudden what's your scariest experience the terrain is kind of like barren desert some of the grouper get to be 600 pounds like small cows docile but huge the water actually lights up from agitating the bioluminescence how long does it take for your fingertips to unwrinkle they usually peel pretty bad during desert awesome question two days do you think in a lifetime we will see a permanent settlement underwater not a base or a search facility but a place where the average person could live it is technically possible even more so than a colony on mars hence why my grandfather experimented with this premise in the early 1960s with can shelf habitats how feasible do you think it is to have ocean floor cities or colonies in our future if feasible how long until we might have such cities anything metal would never last long it would have to be an organic structure not feasible how was your diet down there what kind of food were you eating for that time really really awful we ate freeze dried astronaut food morning noon and eve three times as many calories yet lost over 18 pounds after 31 days what's the first thing you eat when you get back on land i always crave mexican food when i dive or surf for some reason we all wanted a good fresh organic berger and fries was very disappointed as i still couldn't taste much that day did you miss the stars and how was your sleeping schedule did night remain night i didn't because the stars were everywhere on the seafloor considering we dove 10 to 12 hours per day sleep was surprisingly not a problem the clayton sleep center was disappointed i'm sure could you take that shape of water guy in a fight what would be your strategy against a man fish did you see me change into my aquaman suit do you believe in sea monsters yes people underwater qualify what's the rarest encounter that you've had with an animal nose to knows with tawakis in png papua new guinea playing with and eventually feeding on a seven-foot shark what's something that should be common knowledge about the sea the ocean is life no blue no green without it we do not exist if the ocean isn't healthy neither can we neither can our economy simple the only thing that makes our planet special is the water on it which one's your favorite mythological and the water beast and why is that your choice the kraken of course because the thought still scares the living carp out of people even today lol what was the coolest thing and the hardest thing about living underwater would you do it again coolest thing was the being given the luxury of time underwater by becoming an aquanaut it is the biggest obstacle and limitation coming from the surface we broke the time barrier the reverse is true too we had a ceiling from which we could not rise above to do so would create major dcs issues including potential death i'm totally jealous it had to be such an amazing experience were you ever afraid of the potential death factor metal groans in the middle of the night hard to get used to kind of thing anything worth doing has some risk explorers mitigate what they can plan for any contingency and go for it knowing to expect the unexpected death is an inevitable part of life living life is what we must never avoid what's a common misconception about the ocean that annoys you it's indestructible and bottomless resource it's quite the opposite and we are finding out the hard way have you seen the floating patches of trash while out at sea yes in every ocean there is an average of 34 000 pieces of plastic per square mile of ocean a testament to our complete disconnect with the impact we are having on our ocean when people say the majority of the earth's oceans are unexplored what does this actually mean and do you think there are as to yet undiscovered creatures that will shock and amaze the world i'm thinking dinosaur level here less than five percent of our ocean world has been explored to date perspective the ocean represents over 99 of our planet's living space some 3.4 billion cubic square of volume even if you take the entire scuba diving layer into account as well as all the bottom exploration in modern history including my grandfather's pioneering exploits that's more than five percent hi what's the hardest thing about conveying your experience under or at the sea via film ocean is such an alien world alien concept alien sensory input that conveying to someone who hasn't pierced the blue veneer the beauty fragility and importance of our life support system is very difficult it's like trying to explain the properties of a supernova to someone who never took astronomy while you were under water what were your experiences with noise pollution how does your research intersects with noise pollution boat noise machinery noise living in a sort of echo chamber makes these things even more evident imagine what that does to see life especially those animals much more sensitive to noise than we are such as citations what's it sound like down there sound it's not the silent world at all between the echo of machinery the snapping shrimp on the hull the booming and clicking of fish and other sea life it was a cacophony of underwater symphonies how widespread are the effects of human pollution that you have actually seen firsthand on the ocean do you think humanity has a chance of cleaning up the damage we have already done also what's the smartest animal you encountered while in the ocean if i had no hope i would not be doing what i do 24 over 7 hope is essential for change change is essential for us to fathom giving back to our children what will borrowed from their future the octopus what was the setup in order to accomplish that top secret and extremely difficult think nasa training and living in the space station just underwater what was the biggest surprising convenience that you didn't expect when spending so much time underwater people that is visits from surface dwellers funny how one gets used to and defensive of home we started getting bothered by the drop-ins even if they were for our benefit did you have any physical effects after coming back from the deep my chiropractor said that in the seven years that he's known me i've shrunk one inch i think diving aggravates old joint or back injuries the biggest thing is reintegrating into society after getting out i tend to be a little rude the first day i'm back on land did being underwater for that long take a toll on your body did you notice yourself more reactive to sunlight afterwards reactive to sunlight not so much we had full spectrum light in the habitat which helped i lost weight despite the additional calories lost sense of taste during and a few days after air was thicker to breath down below so coming back up seemed like hair was thin took time to get back to normal sleep patterns and food i personally didn't see any permanent effects so far except for wanting to go back do you think saturation divers would actually make better astronauts than air force pilots what sort of selection training and testing does it take to become a saturation diver how do they decide who makes the cut and who is not fit to be a saturation diver for instance do they test you by sticking you in a small unpressurized metal tube for our slash days to see if you can take it before actually certifying you as ready for the real thing they actually monitor and observe your behavior and performance for years before you're given the chance to try it out as far as any standardized tests no i actually wanted to start a company that put sap divers into space to put all the nuts and bolts together on mars before the scientists showed up unfortunately diving disqualifies us for the astronaut physical plus we can work while getting bit by fish how hard is the isolation being in aqua net like are you with anyone on the boat i'm usually with four to six divers in very close quarters it's getting along with everyone that's challenging you're not very popular when you fart in the decompression chamber are the farts higher pitched to how much of that 30 days is time at the end to the pressure rise it's roughly one day of deco for every 100 foot plus a one day hold at minus 20 feet at the end when i was decompressing from 778 feet it was a 11 day deco do you just take dumps and pass out in the water or is there a washroom in that little tube there is a suction toilet i prefer o natural it's the only job where it's acceptable to pee your pants in the water of course what happens if there is an emergency and you need to get to the surface quickly you would have to wait through the desert with an attending medic that is the most dangerous aspect of sad diving your days away from reality what is the biggest misconception of what you do the fact everyone thinks that we get paid ridiculous amounts of money the money is good but sometimes it's months in between jobs and if something happens to your physical body you could be out of a job instantly have you been able to witness some creatures from the deep that rarely show up if so what has been your favorite encounter a translucent tube with a working body inside about two feet long i still don't know what that was despite the risks why did you choose to do stuff like this what motivated you to work in this area i guess life wasn't easy enough for me i needed a challenge what's the funniest thing that you've experienced during your work underwater usually you work alone in the water i was working in concert with a second vessel but didn't realize they had a diver in the water when that guy snuck up on me i about stabbed him then laughed my butt off why is it so hard for me to tread water it's supposed to help save energy or whatever but for me it's really hard work tips or tricks everyone is either positive or negatively buoyant no tricks for the negative have you ever seen anything while working at depth that scared you do you get to go into where the moon pool is it always looks really eerie in pictures if the umbilical was cut somehow is it possible for the diver to swim back up to the bell body recovery was always the most scary situation we have sewn our beacons on our emergency air pack this is the way they would come and find you in the case of a separation swimming back to the bell would be extremely difficult let alone being able to see it

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Keywords: top posts, askreddit funny, reddit top posts, reddit, rebbit, rebbit reddit, reddit stories, reddit funny, r/ama, r/iama, reddit i am a, reddit ask me anything, ama, ask me anything, reddit saturation diver, aquanaut reddit ask me anything, ama diver

Id: USUVqwT_QXo

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021