A Job Involving a Lot of Pressure

Six deep-sea divers have been enlisted by the city of New York to repair a valve at the bottom of a 700-foot shaft in Dutchess County, yesterday New York Times reports. The shaft is located in the Rondout-West Branch tunnel, which is 45 miles long, 13.5 feet wide, up to 1,200 feet below ground” and which brings half of the water supply to New York city from reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains. For more than a month, the six divers have to live

in a sealed 24-foot tubular pressurized tank complete with showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop, breathing air that is 97.5 percent helium and 2.5 percent oxygen, so their high-pitched squeals are all but unintelligible. They leave the tank only to transfer to a diving bell that is lowered 70 stories into the earth, where they work 12-hour shifts, with each man taking a four-hour turn hacking away at concrete to expose the valve.

And more about how the divers work:

Three divers at a time climb into the steel bell, an orb that is lowered down the shaft for 20 minutes to reach the pumping equipment in the tunnel. The bell is tethered to a bundle of cables carrying air, communication lines, electricity and water. Each diver works for four hours and rests underwater for eight before returning to the tank at the surface, where 32 more employees of Global Diving and Salvage, the Seattle company running the project, pass meals, clothes and books through an air lock.

In the saturation control room, Patrick Boyd, a life-support technician, monitors the divers’ air on a panel of screens, one of which reads 2.26 percent, for the amount of oxygen. While underwater, divers often get more oxygen in their mixture to keep them alert. John Lapeyrouse, a dive supervisor who is one of the few who can understand the helium-riddled voices, one of the side effects of what is called “saturation diving,” talked to Mr. McAfee as he worked the other day.

Apparently, the divers can ” request whatever food they like, including steak and fresh salads” but because “the air pressure in the tank dulls the taste buds,” they have to add a lot of “Tabasco, salsa and jalapenos.” And when their work is done, they must “remain in the tank for a week to gradually wean themselves off helium.” Says Robert Onesti, who’s running the project for Global Diving.

“It’s not for everybody. It’s heavy construction work, and it’s deep.”

You can say that again: I’ve come to love swimming thanks to Charlie, but dislike going underwater. Charlie, on the other hand, seems to thrive on being in deep water and, indeed, being under it. Often when we swim at the YMCA pool, he positions himself just where the water is almost over his head, and crouches down under and then propels himself out, and then ducks down under, jumps up out—-repeat, repeat, repeat.

Before he goes to sleep, Charlie always wraps his feet and legs tightly in at least two fleece blankets: Deep pressure seems not merely comforting, but essential, to his system. I’ve said it before, but I don’t know what he, or we, might have done in the past before the invention of polarfleece. And I’ve given up getting potentially scratchy sweaters for Charlie and shirts with stiff cuffs and collars: If he needs to wear those when he’s older for special occasions, he and we can deal.

Who knows but Charlie might, indeed, like scuba diving (I wouldn’t be the one going under with him, that’s for sure)—being under so much water— living underwater for a couple of weeks in a pressurized chamber might (who knows, again) appeal to him.

There’s something out there that any of us, with our diverse talents, can do, even if you have to go to the bottom of the ocean to find it.