The adventures of some of the intrepid men and women who remove offshore oil platforms in the forbidding depths hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. It is high-risk, high-pay work suited to those with a mile-wide daredevil streak. Part-astronaut, part-roughneck-the hardhat diver is a breed apart.
In this episode, we follow two dive teams taking on some of the biggest challenges the Gulf of Mexico has to offer. The divers aboard the "Southern Hercules" barge are 120 miles out to sea to disassemble and plug an ageing subsea oil well. They are diving as deep as regulations allow from the surface: nearly 300 feet underwater. The hazards increase exponentially along with the depth.