The air pressure inside the Byford Dolphin living chambers instantly went from9 atmospheres— the pressure experienced while hundreds of feet below the water — to 1 atmosphere, the normal air pressure at the surface. The explosive rush of air out of the chamber sent the heavy diving bell flyin...
But the greatest danger in saturation diving is the high-pressure environment itself, as a group of four British and Norwegian divers discovered in 1983 in a gruesome event known as the Byford Dolphin accident. Byford Dolphin was a semi-submersible offshore oil rig built by Aker Engineering of ...