Just read Bob Mercer's article and I got a question.

He says he got a pneumo-thorax because the stby diver wasn't there to keep is head tilted back, ie; his airway open, against the weight of his dive hat.

I have been diving for more than a little while, and I have never heard of an underwater head-tilt maneuver. Perhaps it's one of those things that I just missed, but I doubt it. I'm a DMT and I do not ever recall ever hearing this in any class, anywhere.

My point is that I have seen numerous stby drills for unconscious diver where nobody thought to do this. Me included.

My question is how many other hands don't have this in the front of their minds as a stby diver's responsibility? Seems like critical knowledge.

CC DIVER, depth pay is hazard pay plain and simple. Not paying repets is like saying we dont actually give a shit hazard schmazard. Izod wearing goofballs where you work ought to remember who really EARNS the cash for their salaries. At least we get surface to 50 now. These days its cheesy not to pay from the surface.

1 - If a three man crew is too small to dive safe, why exactly is it still in the regs? The diving industry has known 3 isn't enough for a while, or are we just now figuring that out?

2 - How come is it that coast guard and osha regs are different (read Mr Roats most recent Deal)? Dont both have to do what fed regulations say, like in the CFR's?

3 - Where is this stuff in the CFR anyway. I've been looking here and cant find it. Scroll down to get to the diving stuff in subpart T. I'm either blind or stupid but I cant find crew size info.

Just read your front page article. I was wondering when something like this would turn up. What else can you tell us? And what were you guys thinking diving in that shit without PPE?

Oh come on! Neither of you guys ever went for that off a liftboat? Anywhere? Saw a hand one time do a back flip off the bow of the boat we were liveboating and still catch the bouy in one hand. Like to say I did it too, but I missed. Perfect back flip, however. And no harm no foul. It IS possible to be too serious.

The OSHA guy says:

Of course this is a 1996 letter. I wonder what they say today? They ever specifically amend their views on this?

A double! Bet Spunbrass doesn't laugh right off. Prob take him a while to figure that one out.

Brave isnt exactly the word I would use

In his latest article on this site John Roat says:


As I underatand it, the OGP is the major oil companies. Daaaamn ADC! Get on your knees and start appologising!

Good link man. Maybe they'll get around to renaming the reg when they get around to having competent inspectors.

Seen their TRIR Maintenance, oops, I mean legacy shirts? Long sleeve by necessity.

Thanks Greg. Looking forward to reading more

okay, no company info on this forum huh? Man, I wish. So we go out to live boat a gas plume coming up from about 75 feet in the ST block. Not hard to find wiht all the bubbles. smoking light definately out, you can smell gas everywhere on the boat. First diver finds where it's coming out of bottom and gets it jetted out quick quick. Its a 12 inch. whole time he's jetting the leak never slows down. Its not a big enough leak to take his hose but he's thinking about that anyway you know cause it is still pretty good sized leak. turns out to be a flange leaking. Thick flanges. Hmmm...

so dive sup says fine, set a bouy and lets secure the deck while we go hang off and wait for the leak to peter out. Company man gets out fo his rack long enough to tell us that ain't gonna happen. We need to get an impact down there and hammer up the flange. the line's 15 miles long and they don't want to wait for it to depressure and besides they don't want a lot of water in it anyway. Then he says "its only at 900 pounds"!!!

what the fuck! this dude thinks we ought to be hammering up a probably damaged flange with almost a thousand psi behind it? Sure. and the phones and email fly back and forth for about 2 hours. Finally dive sup puts his foot down and says fuck this and fuck you. either we wait for the line to reach ambient pressure or we roll this job up right now and go to the dock. company man caved and we waited 30 somethng hours then we put the gun to it and made it tight. they pressured up the line and the next there still wasn't any bubbles so we called it good.

what pisses me off more than anything about this is our young pup of a project manager bought into us hammering that flange while it was still pressured up. glad we had a dive sup with balls enough to wait.

This what you're looking for?




Cygnus Instruments underwater

where does that leave the ADC? Seems to me their consensus standards are going to be just so much fluff if all the GOM companies go IMCA. Guess this is what happens when you do too little for too long.