But the bends aren’t the only danger. Commercial divers who live and train here are routinely exposed to all kinds of hazards: toxic waste, garbage and sewage, oil spills. “That said, it’s not if you’re going to get bent, it’s when you’re going to get bent.”īent refers to getting decompression sickness or the bends, injuries that can happen after exposure to deep water pressure. “As an educator, I think the answer might be it’s safety, safety, safety,” Dan Vasey, a former commercial diver who teaches the marine diving technologies program at Santa Barbara City College, told SFGATE. “The number of dives, length of time spent underwater, lack of visibility, and the strenuous nature of the task increase the risk of this type of activity.”īut is the risk worth the reward? And what is the future of diving in Santa Barbara? ‘There are old divers and there are bold divers’ Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration says. “These workers are exposed to the same hazards anyone would if they spent extended periods of time underwater, such as drowning, respiratory and circulatory problems, and hypothermia,” the U.S. Pacific Fleet/Kori Melvin via Flickr CC 2.0 It’s also the only profession in the world they’d want to do.Ī U.S.

Longtime divers and diving instructors here admit that theirs is a story of contradictions: Their passion, their profession, they know, is a dangerous one, the peril being up there with astronauts, soldiers and test pilots. In the wake of the disaster, a new narrative has surfaced in Santa Barbara, the place widely recognized as the world’s epicenter of commercial diving. But the damage of the biggest maritime disaster in recent California history had already been done - both in the diving community and to the public’s opinion of diving at large.

The Rattler by Ryan Berridge