Re: Newbie Question

[VBra676539@aol.com]

In the early days of DLO work (late 60s) Roger Cook, George Bezak and Dennie Breese did some "live-boating" as it was called, in Ed Link's shiny new Deep Diver. That is, punching the diver out, trimming back to neutral, and navigating behind the diver as he or she worked. There was more of it done out of Shelf Diver in the Gulf of Mexico the next year, but the practice was discontinued following questions by the US Navy and the insurance folks. One mistake with a saturated diver and he dies, simple as that, and there was really no defense against that concern. In the years that followed, where we did hundreds of DLO dives per year and supported divers for thousands of work hours, it was never attempted again (to my knowledge).

In the psub you envision you also run the risk of injuring the pilot as well as the diver. Most of us sub drivers felt pretty confident that we could maintain depth and noodle along behind scientists or commercial divers, but the powers that be made it an "absolutely not now not never" kind of deal, so we didn't.
Vance