Pro tip: 10 minutes of torch time on a wet dock taught me more than 3 years of textbook tables

Mia Singh · 2026-10-02T06:35:04.828639+00:00

Last week I was doing a simple inspection under a pier in San Diego and a guy named Ray, who has been diving for 28 years, watched me spend 20 minutes planning a 30 foot descent like it was a 180 foot bounce. He did not say much, just asked me one thing: what is the job actually asking for. That question bugged me the whole drive home because I realized I had been treating every dive like a worst case scenario, stacking up decompression obligations and gear checks for work that did not need it. I had learned tables and procedures in school, but I had never really learned the water itself. Ray had me do the same inspection the next day with just a basic plan and it went smoother in 15 minutes than anything I had done all season. The part that stuck with me is how much of commercial diving is reading the actual conditions instead of the paperwork. How do you all decide when a dive plan is overbuilt for the job?

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Pro tip: 10 minutes of torch time on a wet dock taught me more than 3 years of textbook tables | Commercial Divers - Discusd