Today we had a tour of the dive facilities on board the Alucia. The Alucia is very well equipped for scuba diving.
She has a decompression chamber, which is used in case of a diver
gets the bends. This is a condition in which dissolved gas comes out as bubbles
inside the body and the diver must be recompressed and then slowly decompressed
as treatment. The chamber looks like a giant tick-tack with port holes in it.
Surprisingly it has a capacity for 3 people: the patient,
the nurse, and a third diver. Before entering, you must be completely washed, re-clothed in natural
non-flammable fiber clothing and stripped of all jewelry. The reason for this
is that you will be breathing oxygen and O2 feeds fire. The whole
procedure takes several hours, but it has a little exchange window by which
they can pass you a blanket or a snack without de-pressurizing the entire
system.
None of this sounds
like fun, so I will be diving very conservatively, and drinking lots of water and sleeping
well in order to dive safely.
To our good fortune, the Alucia
also has mixed-gas dive support, which will allows us to dive with air that has
32% oxygen instead of the normal 21% oxygen.
Using this oxygen enriched air with a conservative dive plan decreases
the possibility of getting the bends.
The mixed-air support, plus the chamber make the Alucia an excellent dive platform for a
month-long expedition to remote islands.
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