For Argyll

The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) has been awarded over £1.5 million by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), from March 2009 until 2014. This is designed to enable SAMS to continue hosting the national facility for scientific diving and the accompanying decompression chamber at Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory near Oban in Argyll.

The decompression (hyperbaric) chamber is one of four in Scotland which the NHS can use for emergency re-compression and recreational and commercial divers. Manager of the diving and decompression facility, Dr Martin Sayer says that the funding will ‘present a real opportunity to develop the facility further in a manner that assures its position as a woirldwide leader in the fields of scientific diving and hyperbaric research’.