Learned something wild about dive physics from an old rig welder in the Gulf

I was working a job on a platform south of Houma last month and this old welder told me that at 100 feet the nitrogen in your blood behaves totally different than what I learned in school. He showed me a study from 1992 that says the standard decompression tables we all use are based on outdated models from the Navy. I spent 4 years thinking I knew the math but apparently the real numbers vary by like 15 percent depending on water temp. Has anyone else run into this or is this just one old dude with a theory?

3 comments

3 Comments

miller.emery26d ago

Yeah this tracks with a bigger pattern I keep seeing everywhere. So much of what we treat as solid facts is really just old assumptions that nobody questioned because they worked good enough for most people. I mean look at nutrition science or even stuff like how we think about sleep cycles. Those navy tables were made for specific conditions and specific bodies but we turned them into universal rules. It is like trusting a map from the 80s to navigate a city that got completely rebuilt. The dude might just be some old welder but that does not mean he is wrong. Sometimes the people actually doing the thing see the cracks before the experts ever do.

susanb3426d agoProlific Poster

Friend of mine worked in a steel mill for years. Told me the safety manuals were written by people who never set foot on the factory floor, and the real tricks to staying safe came from the old guys who'd been there since the 70s. That book knowledge doesn't always match up with what works when you're covered in grime and trying not to lose a finger.

allen.kai26d ago

Read a book about the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse once, similar story.