Surface-supplied diving is diving in water using equipment supplied with breathing gas using a diver’s umbilical from the surface, either from the shore or from a diving support vessel.
Surface supply diving is very different to Scuba diving where a diver wears self-contained breathing apparatus. There are some obvious advantages to surface supply diving to scuba. Risk to divers is considered far lower for a start, mainly because the air supply is usually a far larger supply than just a small tank on a divers back.
Dive support vessels usually have built-in dive spreads which include air supply banks, monitoring and recording systems. Most vessels are often very large some even with accommodation blocks for dive teams and the vessel crew. These large vessels are ideal for working in deeper waters offshore but inshore in shallow waters is where smaller vessels are required.
Commercial Rib Charter‘s 12m Delta cabin Rib CRC ‘Tempest’ is a fully equipped dive support vessel. She is fitted with a three diver surface supply spread fully certified and IMCA compliant. CRC Tempest has jet propulsion to avoid any entanglement risk and she draws only 60cm. Equipment includes a dive platform, diver recovery ladder and a recovery davit. CRC can also install mobile dive spreads to our other large cabin Ribs including our 15m multipurpose workboat CRC ‘Galaxy’ and our 13m multipurpose Catamaran ‘CRC Gladiator’.
