IN QUEST OF PEARL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXV, Issue 8216, 13 August 1915, Page 3

IN QUEST OF PEARL

Diving for shell, and incidentally for the little treasure of pearl—is carried on in deeper water oif Thursday Island than anywhere else. Other productive beds. He comparatively shallow—the Persian Gulf, the Sulu rieas, the Gulf of Manaar. The greatest depth at which a diver in helmet and dress' can perform any sort of useful labour is held to be 182 feet. At that depth a Spanish diver raised £9000 in silver bars from a wreck in Finisterre. At 150 feet an English diver salved £50,000 from a wreck off Leuconna Reef, off the Chinese coast. The maximum depth to which the sponge-fishers of tho Mediterranean successfully descend is 150 feet. In the Torres Strait, with the depletion of the the divers have moved from the shallow water of from four to six fathoms to depths of 120 feet, where the operation is a distressfuland perilous one (says "Harper's Magazine"). A paternal law prohibits diving beyond a specified depth of safety i but as the law courts have held that a diver must actually be seen at that depth, if anybody is to be held amenable, and as the reefs are remote from any practical scheme of supervision, it is a law of small consequence, after all, and the perilously .deep diving goes on, no'doubt, much as before, with its occasional issue of sudden death.