![]() During a scuba dive, divers take on an extra amount of oxygen and nitrogen in their compressed air tanks. Known as ‘the bends’ amongst divers, it’s one of the most challenging parts of diving simply because no amount of fancy or high-tech equipment can save a diver from it. One of the most feared conditions amongst deep-sea divers (more than a chance meeting with a Kraken), decompression sickness happens when a diver ascends from the murky depths too fast, causing their blood to literally bubble up as if it was boiling. But First, Why is Decompression Sickness So Bad? A brief explanation of decompression sickness That is, until 2002, when the Byford Dolphin, an offshore semi-submersible drilling rig operated by Dolphin Drilling, became the center of a saturation dive catastrophe. They called this technique “Saturation Diving”, and for a long time, this technique managed to drastically reduce the number of offshore diving-related accidents. Navy devised a way for offshore oil rigs to minimize the risk of decompression sickness in deep-sea divers, and that’s namely to just keep them underwater for extended periods of time. Failure to do so, and divers risk life and limb to decompression sickness. For these divers, going that deep into the deep blue sea often requires descending and ascending in an extremely accurate and controlled fashion. That being said, there are still responsibilities that only a human diver can pull off, like routine maintenance, spot checks, or anything else that might require fine motor skills. Most of these can be done using machines thanks to recent developments in robotics, and indeed, a lot of current offshore operations rely on various robots to do the bulk of the deep diving. Basically, this means setting up oil and gas drilling rigs in the middle of the ocean, with the ends of the rig itself extending to extreme depths so as to make contact with the seafloor and beyond. In our constant need for oil and gas, many corporations conduct offshore oil and gas drilling.
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