Caley Ocean Systems, is supplying a portable saturation dive bell handling system to submarine rescue and specialist subsea operations company, JFD (a part of James Fisher & Sons). Caley has designed the dive bell handling system to meet exacting width requirements, at just 3m it will be one of the most ultra-compact, fully road transportable, dive bell handling systems ever made.

The dive bell handling system is designed for over-the-side and moon pool deployment of the bell. Its modular construction, together with small footprint, enable the bell handling system to be deployed on a number of vessels of opportunity. Type approved by Lloyd’s Register, the handling system’s variable speed electric winch enables precise control and positioning of the bell and its guide wire and clump weight. The dive bell will interface with a JFD decompression chamber.

“A typical road transportable dive bell handling is around 5m, by reducing the width by 40% to 3m we’re able to greatly increase the ease with which the handling system can be transported to even the most remote location,” says Gregor McPherson, sales director, Caley Ocean Systems.

JFD is one of the world’s largest subsea operations and engineering companies providing complete diving and underwater systems to the commercial and defence industries. JFD has a long pedigree in the successful design and manufacture of saturation diving systems and the company’s track record shows more than one hundred systems built spanning the last 35 years. JFD was created in 2014 through the merger of Divex and James Fisher Defence and in 2015 acquired the National Hyperbaric Centre.