Serena Kirby, Denmark Bulletin

A career as a commercial deep-sea diver is not for the faint hearted but it’s been Jason Thornton’s profession for nearly two decades.

Jason works for companies that supply divers to the oil and gas industry for the construction and maintenance of underwater pipelines.

He says the job is far from glamorous.

The elaborate dive gear is heavy and cumbersome and includes a thick umbilical cord that provides air.

The cord also provides warm water that’s pumped through the dive suit via a network of rubber pipes like veins to avoid hypothermia.

His astronaut-style helmet also carries communication cables, a video camera and lights. Jason said his work involved various dive depths and dive durations.

“The really deep stuff which they call saturation diving, involves actually living in a pressurised vessel on the back of a boat,” Jason says.

A dive bell is attached to the pressurised vessel and the crew crawl through a hatch into the bell which is then lowered to the depth required for the crew to do their work.

The bell acts like an upturned cup in a sink of water so the inside remains dry.

“It’s like an elevator the size of a portaloo and there’ll be three blokes in there so it’s pretty cramped,” Jason said.

Once the divers leave the bell to do their work they need to be back in the bell within six hours.

The drivers will then crawl back into the pressurised chamber vessel and stay there for up to 28 days while they conduct their underwater shift work.

“The chamber is a great leveller of egos as you’re breathing around 90 per cent helium so you all sound like chipmunks,” Jason said.

“Some of the divers are quite big scary fellas but you can’t possibly take some massive ex-military bloke seriously when their voice sounds like Daffy Duck.”

Jason said one of the negatives of his job was that there was no set roster and that he had to be ready to go whenever a job call came in.

“The pay is good but it’s a very cut-throat industry so if you turn a job down, you’ll more than likely lose your spot on that crew.

“Thankfully, I have a decent reputation and a thick enough resume to secure work and I also have a marine science degree so I’m probably the most overqualifi ed diver out there.”

Most of Jason’s work is off the coast of Australia but he’s also worked off the coast of Azerbaijan.

He admits that the job used to be considered one of the most dangerous in the world and sadly several divers still die each year in places like Mexico.

Better technology and safety procedures have meant that there has not been a deep-sea diver death in Australian waters for many decades.

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 19 December 2024.