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My old company in Tampa switched from standard neoprene to compressed neoprene drysuits last year and the difference in bottom time is crazy.
We were doing a lot of hull cleaning and inspection work on some container ships. With the old 7mm suits, after about 90 minutes in 55-degree water, you were just done. Shivering, fingers getting stiff, the whole deal. The company invested in the compressed neoprene suits for the whole crew. The first dive I did with the new gear, I was down for over two and a half hours on the same job, same water temp, and came up feeling way more functional. It wasn't just about comfort, it was about being able to actually focus on the task and not just the cold. The suits were a huge upfront cost, but the boss said productivity went up enough to justify it in under six months. Has anyone else's company made a gear switch that seemed expensive but actually paid off fast in a real way?
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kellys787mo ago
Oh man, that's so true. We swapped out our old comms for full-face masks with built in systems. The difference on salvage jobs was night and day. Instead of hand signals and slates in crap visibility, we could actually talk to each other and the surface. Cut our time on a wreck clearing job by like 40% because we weren't constantly stopping to write stuff down. Boss grumbled about the invoice but shut up after the first week.
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mila_murphy217mo ago
Ever have a comms unit flood on you mid-dive? Tbh, we learned the hard way to always do a quick freshwater soak after saltwater jobs. Just dunk the whole mask in a bucket for like ten minutes. It stops the mics from getting all crusty and keeps the voice clear. Boss tried to skip it once to save time and we spent half the next dive sounding like robots.
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