Features

SAN FRANCISCO — Just outside San Francisco Bay, about 17 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, teams of divers are braving frigid, murky water to pump thick oil from a ship that sank nearly 50 years ago. 

Each pair of divers spends nearly a month in a pressurized environment — either 175 feet below the icy Pacific or in a special chamber aboard a barge that floats in the blustery wind above the sunken SS Jacob Luckenbach. 

The divers, and about 40 people who have lived on the barge since May, so far have pumped about 12,000 gallons of oil from the ship. It has stores of about 132,000 gallons. 

Each day, one diver stays inside the dive tank and keeps watch while the other, attached to a 100-foot cable, wades through the swift currents in the Gulf of the Farallones to try to drain oil from the ship. 

When they’re finished, the divers are put in a pressurized tank on the barge where they live for the 28 days they’re on the job. It’s known as “saturation diving.” 

The ship is too deep for the divers to descend on a regular dive. Humans can dive to about 130 feet, and they must be brought back to the surface slowly to avoid the painful — and potentially fatal — condition known as “the bends,” which happens when nitrogen forms bubbles in the divers’ bodily tissues. 

To avoid the bends, the divers breathe a combination of helium and oxygen while in the water and in their living quarters. They remain under pressure the entire time. 

After 28 days, a new team is sent in. The cleanup of the ship could take until the end of summer.