He Has One of the Most Dangerous Jobs in the World. Here’s Why He Says It's Worth It (Exclusive) (2025)

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 offshore oil rigs. When he gets the call to go on site, he can be there for weeks on end, diving every 12 hours.

Callahan exclusively tells PEOPLE Magazine what it's like to have one of the world's most dangerous jobs — and why he can't imagine doing anything else.

"It's not for the faint of heart. It's not for everyone," he admits. "I wouldn't suggest it to anyone with family and home life because you're gone weeks at a time, and when you're offshore, there's no cell service."

Callahan was in the U.S. Army for six years and thought about going to college when he got out. However, with schools going virtual at the time, he knew he wanted to do something more tactical and hands-on.

He then noticed a billboard for a commercial diving school in Jacksonville, Florida, that piqued his interest. He gave them a call and, within a week and a half, he was in school training to be a diver.

Training, he says, can take anywhere from five to seven months, depending on the program. His school consisted of four months of commercial diving training and then one month of scuba diving training. He went offshore as soon as he graduated.

"There are two types of commercial diving," Callahan explains. "There's inland, and then there's offshore inland, like bridge repair inspections. That's a body of water on land, and then offshore is all the oil rig deep-sea diving. I knew instantly that's what I wanted to go do."

"Everyone starts as a tender, two to three years of doing everything. When you're out on a boat, you tend to the diver, taking care of all the life-support equipment," Callahan recalls. "You're sending all the tools down to the divers while they're working. You're running cranes and ensuring all the equipment has oil and fuel. They do a good 90% of the work on the deck of the boat, with the occasional chance to go dive."

"I attended for two years before I officially became a diver," he adds. "They call it breaking out, so I broke out as a diver, and then the schedule as a diver is completely different."

The timeline for the job varies depending on how long it takes to get everything done. It could be one week or eight. Callahan says that the longest he spent offshore was six months straight on an oil rig.His deepest dive to date was a whopping 245 feet below the surface.

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A typical day for Callahan is very regimented, ensuring everything goes as smoothly as possible.

"You dive once every 12 hours. The tenders wake me up when it's my turn to dive. I do my work in the water. Depending on the depth, it could be three hours in the water or 25 to 35 minutes," Callahan shares. "Then do a lot of decompression on your way up and in a chamber. You're not supposed to go crazy after a dive, because you could get the bends and decompression sickness, but then I work out, eat, relax, and then go back to sleep and get woken up. Do the same thing 12 hours later."

Despite rumors that deep-sea dives shorten lifespans and that there aren't divers past the age of 35, Callahan says he works with everyone from 18 to 65. A large part of why they can dive for so long is due to their extensive post-dive care.

"Humans aren't meant to be underwater. That's why, when you get out of the water, you gotta sit in a decompression chamber for an hour to three hours just to get bubbles out of your blood," Callahan says. "We do our hyperbaric oxygen therapy for decompression after every dive."

However, Callahan admits that one of the worst parts of the job is losing friends, either through accidents or health issues.

"One of my buddies just got banned, and he can't dive anymore because they found a problem with his heart," he says, noting that "a lot of people realize they could make more money welding on land."

"A lot walk away, and also workplace accidents happen," he adds. "There's around 300 commercial divers, and then a few more tenders offshore. Everyone knows everyone. Out of those 300, even losing one a year, it's heartbreaking."

Although Callahan loves his work, he wants people to have a realistic understanding of the job before following in his footsteps.

"Don't expect it to be a get-rich-quick scheme because it's not that," he shares. "Through TikTok, I've messaged new folks that went to dive school because of my videos I tell them all the same thing, once you get on a job, learn as much as you can."

"Don't be like a know-it-all, because one mistake is someone else's life in these situations. Be ready to work hard."

Although "normal people without loose screws" would likely find his job "terrifying," Callahan says he feels "at peace" below the surface.

"That's my happy place — the bottom of the ocean. It's quiet," he shares. "You're alone with your own thoughts. You're the only person working on this job. There's no one else there to mess it up for you. It is fun. After doing this, I can't picture myself working a normal job."