Auckland Divers Support Theory

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31656, 17 April 1968, Page 2

Auckland Divers Support Theory

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 16. Auckland deep-sea divers think there may be something in research findings at Portsmouth, England, that divers tend to have more girl children than boys.

Statistics collected by Royal Navy experts, says a Reuter cablegram from London, show that nearly 80 per cent of births to deep-sea divers' wives are daughters. A eheck In Auckland today showed that of the full-time divers serving with the Navy here, 12 are married. Of these 18 have daughters and nine sons. But many of the boys were bom before the husbands started diving. Auckland doctors said today they knew of no similar research into the effect of parents' occupations on the sex of their children. Professor D. G. Bonham, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Auckland, said he recalled some findings that people living in high country

tended to have more male children than usual. But he was not sure that this should mean conversely that men spending time in the depths of the sea would have more girl babies. The Reuter report said a questionnaire was being sent to the Royal Navy’s underwater men around the world to glean information about their children's sex and what sort of diving job they were doing at the time of conception.

"It might be a key to predetermining the sex of a child,” said Commander Philip White, who heads the research and is himself a diver and father of two girls.