saturation diving

American  

noun

1. a method of prolonged diving, using an underwater habitat to allow divers to remain in the high-pressure environment of the ocean depths long enough for their body tissues to become saturated with the inert components of the pressurized gas mixture that they breathe: when this condition is reached, the amount of time required for decompression remains the same, whether the dive lasts a day, a week, or a month.

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saturation diving British  

noun

1. a method of diving in which divers live in a complex of decompression chambers for up to 28 days, going to work via a diving bell, and only decompressing at the end of the period. Helium is substituted for nitrogen in the air supply to avoid the narcotic effects of nitrogen

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Other Word Forms

• saturation dive noun

Etymology

Origin of saturation diving

First recorded in 1965–70

Example Sentences

Saturation diving is staying under the surface for periods long enough to bring the body’s tissues into equilibrium with the partial pressures of the inert components of the breathing gas.

From Washington Post

The concept that Captain Bond developed was “saturation diving,” which involves putting divers under high atmospheric pressure before descent and bringing them back to normal very gradually.

From New York Times

And he delineates the physics and physiology of free and ‘saturation’ diving, submersibles such as Cornelis Drebbel’s seventeenth-century wood-and-leather vessel, and the robots slated to replace deep-ocean researchers.

From Nature

Capt. Mazzone helped Bond lead the animal and human tests that developed saturation diving, a technique that made possible dives lasting hours, days and eventually weeks.

From Washington Post

Divers will use a technique called saturation diving where the undersea habitat is pressurized to mimic what is found on earth's surface and prevent decompression sickness, when human tissue can absorb gases like nitrogen in dangerously high volumes.

From Reuters