Éric Saint-Sulpice has been a diver for over thirty years. Despite the difficulties, the physical and psychological pressure of the job, he never stopped diving but regrets that this strategic and risky work is increasingly precarious.
Éric Saint-Sulpice is passionate. His profession, diver, he wants to talk about it. When we call him to offer him an interview, he tries to negotiate two hours of interview… it will be an hour and a half. At 52, the diver has indeed the bottle and things to tell. ” I am one of the youngest! No, seriously, I’m a veteran of the trade.. […] The age pyramid is wide and very flat among young people, and turns into a peak. I am a mammoth in the profession. »
Passionate about the underwater environment, Éric Saint-Sulpice has been diving since he was 17 years old. The 50-year-old has made hundreds of dives as a professional diver, and still participates today in interventions on hydroelectric dams and other semi-emergent infrastructures in the Alps. If he testifies, it is so that those who would like to discover his profession are alerted: ” Diving is great, there are very important responsibilities, it’s a passion and strategic job for society, but it’s still a very dangerous job, and which is against all odds poorly paid. »
First dive and hazing
At the age of 23, after studying underwater biology, Éric Saint-Sulpice left for California, on the advice of part of his family who lived in the United States. It was there that he discovered the world of divers. Concentrated behind his round glasses, he plunges back into his memories: “ I wanted to be able to go into the aquatic environment on my own, by diving […] There was a very expensive course in an American university, but I couldn’t afford it. So I headed for a second two-year course, which is long compared to France. Indeed, in France the training lasts a few weeks, a few months at most. On leaving his Californian school, he was immediately recruited by a company to work on an oil station. offshore. ” A company has embarked the full class, the seven students. We all went to Louisiana, and we started working on platforms “, he recalls.
However, the young graduate does not dive directly to perform underwater work, such as welding or concreting. On this oil platform, in Louisiana, he helps older divers, prepares the equipment… no diving for beginners. The first time the young man dives in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s not even a real diver’s dive. We wake him up at night, at 1 a.m. ” They hazed me: I equipped myself and got into the water, in the dark. I had to take a huge rope, swim to a buoy, more than a hundred meters away, to go around the buoy and bring the huge rope back to the oil structure. It was a little stressful, and I realized after the fact that it was a bit of nonsense! »
From passion to fear
His non-renewed work visa, Éric Saint-Sulpice returns to France to work. He is 26 years old, passes equivalences and begins to dive. What he likes about this job is the mix between the solitude that the depths provide and the complementarity between the divers. Since the work cannot be carried out in one go – the time under water being limited – they are carried out in rotation. ” We have a responsibility: the team allows the task to be carried out in its entirety, but the person who makes his dive is responsible for his task. Until recently, we were our only boss in the water, even if today we tend to be more and more watched by cameras, even by robots which film, which warn us as soon as we made a handling error. Far from regretting this progress, he considers that it is also a way of better protecting the diver. ” If a shark arrives behind its back, the robot can warn it, or if a swordfish arrives and risks sticking its nose in its back. »
Despite the passion, fear is also part of the job. The human body is not made to go in water, even less at these depths. Some divers dive up to 500 meters, but the risk is not a question of depth. Everyone manages with their fear, says the diver: “ Fear can exist, and someone who has never been afraid is really unconscious because he has no concept of danger. It is better to have scared yourself several times, to have understood why, because there are incredible dangers. »
An unrecognized risky profession
Of a rather playful nature when he talks about his job, when it comes to addressing the global difficulties of divers, his tone becomes more serious. Words are harder to find. He himself scared himself several times. Modest, he does not wish to drag on the subject, but still recounts an event. ” I had to visit a valve which was to pass part of the water from the reservoir after the dam. This valve there, in principle, was closed for my intervention. In the end, she wasn’t. Underwater, the smaller the leak, the louder it is. There, Éric Saint-Sulpice hears nothing. But he sees his air bubbles, which, rather than rising to the surface, follow him, attracted by a current. Approaching the valve, he realizes in time that it is open, because the water is clear, and he aborts the operation: ” If the water is not clear, if the leak does not make noise, this is one of the main risks for divers: you get sucked in by the valve, it means a minimum of major trauma, if not death. Me, I had a good time. I was fired up, angry, it was like a trap. »
If the diver escaped several times without sequelae, others were less lucky. Secretary General of association and trade union organization scaphmotion, Éric Saint-Sulpice has several times had to closely study the accidents of his comrades. In 2018, a dark year for the profession, four divers died and a fifth, aged just 28, died at the end of 2020 after two and a half years in a coma. Out of five hundred divers in regular activity, five deaths is considerable: ” The same proportion of deaths at work among teachers would mean 8,000 deaths in 2018. The public authorities do not like it to be said but it is a reality “, he regrets.
Transmit knowledge
These figures do not take into account accidents at work, from the cut finger to lasting psychological trauma. These harassing and risky working conditions, coupled with a salary equivalent to the Smic – the minimum interprofessional salary – at the start of a career, do not help to keep young people in the profession. Many of them stop after a few years.
Like his trade union comrades, the diver tries to fight to make the profession known and to obtain better working conditions, in particular with more financial means on the construction sites, so as not to sacrifice safety. Training as a public works diver has recently been considered as a diploma. A first timid step for the trade unionist, but which at least allows to recognize the profession of diver. His organization is asking, among other things, that the minimum depth to retain the hardship factor for workers in the depths be reduced from eleven meters to one meter or that the minimum authorized team be increased to four individuals instead of the current three.
The question concerns everyone, because the sector is ultra-strategic, recalls the trade unionist: “ The divers are vital. We intervene on nuclear power plants which, today, are not in a great state, in contaminated swimming pools, on hydroelectric dams, whose valves can fail if we do not monitor them… It is the divers who will regenerate the wells for drinking water, which deal with treatment plants… We also monitor the foundations of bridges. We don’t want to see a TGV at 300 km/h on the bridge which gives way in its path. »
Éric Saint-Sulpice can no longer dive as much as before. After thirty years of activity, the body is no longer so solid. The man therefore reduces the sail to occasional dives, to inspect the beginning of the work or conclude it, preferring to concentrate on the training of young divers. Because what he fears above all for his profession is that the accumulated knowledge will gradually be diluted over the abandonments and that accidents will increase, even though underwater technology has never been so efficient.
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