The Underwater Centre has become the world’s only commercial diving school to offer a closed bell saturation diving system with a self-propelled hyperbaric lifeboat (SPHL), following a major refurbishment.

Thanks to significant investment and support from the global oil and gas sector, The Underwater Centre relaunched its three-week closed bell diving course in June. The first course was fully subscribed and applications are open for future courses.

Subsea 7 and TechnipFMC have provided technical support, site supervision and conducted the refurbishment work on behalf of The Underwater Centre, which was also project managed by Subsea 7 with close collaboration and support from TechnipFMC. The combined resources and collaboration between The Underwater Centre, Subsea 7 and TechnipFMC served as an example of working together as one team.

As well as refurbishing equipment, completely rebuilding the closed bell and adding the SPHL from Subsea 7’s decommissioned Rockwater 1, a vessel has been converted to create a new training system – renamed Deep Diver 1 .

SPHLs are one of the main means of evacuating divers form a saturation diving environment in the event of an emergency, and are an important part of most modern closed bell diving systems.