Diver at Work - Open Water Diving

The Open Water Dive is a kind of standard dive

Diving in open water, which will say that is always possible for the diver to go straight up the the surface in case of an emergency, of course having the decompression in mind. Open Water dive is the safest diving form, therefor it's the first thing a diver learns to perform.

Diving Equipment used for open water dive, can reach from mask and breathing apparatus to the use of heavy helmets and drysuits, depending of the divers qualifications and demands. Go direct to one of the sections of this page:

Recreational or sports diver
Professional diver
Hard Hard Diver

Recreational and sports diver

Very pretty girl dressed in a Viking Sport Rubber Drysuit

Equipment used by sports divers can be very different, it can reach from mask, fins and maybe a wetsuit, for longer dive a SCUBA is added. The most demanding sports divers uses drysuit and full face mask.

Both the pictures shows sports divers, the girl on the left is dressed in a Viking Sport Drysuit with latex hood.
The diver shown to the right use a more professional type of suit, a Viking Pro Drysuit with latex hood and latex dry gloves.

Professional Diver

A professional or commercial diver is a diver who dives for other people or companies and get paid for it. Before a person can be doing that, an education as Prof. diver is a demand in far the most countries. In the education program the coming diver learn to dive with SCUBA and Surface Proff. diver in Viking Drysuit

supplied Air equipment to a depth of 40 meters. If the diver will be able to dive deeper, an extra education is necessary.

The Equipment used by professional divers is very much like the equipment used by sports divers, but will for the most be in a heavier quality. Wetsuit is very little used, but a special type of wetsuit, called a hot water suit, is used by some divers who is diving very deep for a very long time. The suit is often a rubber or neoprene drysuit, in the cold part of the world with dryhood and drygloves. In many countries, it's a law that professional divers is able to communicate with the surface, therefor mask is nearly always a full face mask, like the AGA Interspiro or EXO, some divers use a light weight helmet like the Kirby Morgan.

The air supply is often from the surface by an airhose, which also hold the cable for communications, but in case of cable break or other lose of contact to the surface the diver also has an Air-bottle on the back.

Hard Hat Diver

For more than 100 years ago the first people was diving down into the water with air-supply, the divers was dressed in heavy copper helmets and rubber suits, with an heavy airline to the surface, on the foot they got very heavy lead soled shoes, weight belt and finally the diver is dress in diving equipment with a weight of around 200 pound!!!!

Old and New style Hard Hat Diver You think maybe know, that this kind of equipment no longer is in use, but wrong, Hard Hard equipment is still in use, not very much longer, but some diver still dive using this kind of equipment. Today's hard hat diver can choose to use a lighter helmet made of glass-fiber, the very stiff canvas/rubber suit is replaced by modern rubber drysuits or maybe a Hot Water Wetsuit. On the picture the development of Hard Hat equipment can be seen, which diver, left or right, is using the oldest ?

Yes, your right, it's the left diver who is dressed in the oldest equipment, not so difficult ?
On the left a diver is just finish with the job, and is now ready to come back on the ground. The helmet is a Kirby Morgan SuperLite helmet and it's attach to a Viking Drysuit. The bottle on the divers back is a so called 'Bail-out' bottle, just for emergency use. Click on the picture to see a bigger version.

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