Russian Ministry of Defence Decides to Bring Back Rare Deep-Sea Diving Unit
Russian Ministry of Defence is bringing back a rare military specialization: deep-sea divers. St. Petersburg Naval Rescue and Underwater Technologies Institute is training them. Last fall the divers conquered a depth of 317 meters. Their new goal is to descend to 400 meters.
Dmitry Zimenkin will tell us more about their training.
Nerves of steel, good health, and knowledge of 400 instruction points for extreme situations. Perhaps these are the main qualities of a good diver. Training in the SRI pressure chambers of rescue and underwater technologies is not much different from real dives. The conditions, sensations, and risks are the same.
Sergey Avdeev, Naval Academy Deputy Head: "The pressure is very high there, in the pressure chamber at a great depth, for example, a typically fast house fly will look like in slow motion. The blood also thickens and gets saturated with gases, everything is very hard there".
100, 150 meters, 200. During training, the conditions for divers are similar to what they experience when going gradually through compression and decompression in the sea. Last fall the midshipman Andrei Yemelyanov took part in a dive to a depth of 317 meters. The descent lasted a whole day, and he had to spend 17 days with his team in a tight pressure chamber.
Andrei Yemelyanov: "The presence of a TV set helped a lot, we could watch movies. -Which table-top games did you have? Card games are banned in the Navy. I think it's right".
Normobaric suits help divers in rescuing submariners or repairing equipment at a depth of up to 400 m. Experts say that robots will soon take over all of the divers' functions. But for now, people have to take risks and overcome their fear.
Mikhail Kramarenko, Head of Experimental Research Base: "Fear is normal, but you have to suppress it. And when fear gets out of control it provokes panic, and unfortunately, it only leads to bad results. If the diver is prepared, he will probably complete the task, he won't lose his nerve, and his fear won't turn into panic".
The group of military divers will be trained at the Rescue and underwater Technologies Institute during a year. They will try to conquer a depth of 400 m in the fall. The dive will take place in the Pacific Ocean from the Igor Belousov rescue vessel.
Dmitry Zimenkin, Denis Smirnov, Oleg Skokov. From St. Petersburg — Vesti.