They have been growing on subsea structures for decades but are now under threat as old platforms are decommissioned.

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. Extracting oil from the ocean floor requires a deep-sea rig setup with some of the most powerful machinery on the planet today: from motorized ...

Being alone at the bottom of the ocean with little to no visibility sounds like a nightmare for most people. For David Callahan, it's his happy place. Callahan, 30, is a commercial diver working on ...

You work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. And every day is a crapshoot at the bottom ...

In 1983, a catastrophic failure aboard the Byford Dolphin oil rig in the North Sea led to one of the most horrifying industrial accidents in human history. During a routine transfer between a diving ...

On a North Sea oil rig several years ago, an engineer noticed a strange phenomenon. A cloud of insects would descend from the sky and land on the upper reaches of the platform. There were thousands of ...

David Callahan is one of a few hundred people who are deep-sea oil rig divers, and he can’t imagine doing anything else Meredith Wilshere is a Society and Culture writer at PEOPLE. Her work has ...

Once I reach the ocean floor, I have 40 minutes maximum to work. Diving has intense physiological effects on your body, so you never want to run out of time. There’s a technique called burning, or ...