PEARL DIVING

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 11, 12 July 1930, Page 6

PEARL DIVING

A VIVID PICTURE

DANGEROUS WORK

EFFECT OF PEESSUEE

'Die risks the pear! diver has to face are vividly set forth by Mr. Victor Berge iii a newly-published book, in which he gives a thrilling account of his. fight under water with ail octopus and of an attack by a shark, says the Melbourne "Age.'* In an informative chapter dealing with, thu work of diving for pearls he writes: ''Since I first taught myself, in the Banda Islands, to use a diving suit, I have spent several thousand hours under water; I have employed and managed many gangs of divers, native skin divers and those using gear, and I have naturally acquired a deep professional interest in all the details of work in this, 'most alieii of. the elements man has conquered. "FinI'skill and daring under water, without the'artificial aids of science, and for general knowledge of submarine life and conditions, no' race can equal the Polynesian's:.: .. They really should be classed- .as amphibious, along with seals, turtles, frogs, beavers, and other land^water creatures, .The highest ambition of a Polynesian, youth is to become a gre.at and strong diver. "When you 'see a lot of skin divers working from their canoes .you can heai" them 'taking the wind' in preparation. A man gathers himself together, his face works, he gulps and groans and'strains as he forces his diaphragm downward and pumps air into his lungs, like a eompres-sot-j.and holds it there. I,never knew a white man'who had reached a real .mastery of that trick—probably just because lie hasn't had the years of preliminary training,l and his organs and blood vessels and tissues had not had the gradual training to resist pressure. I've tried naked diving: myself down" to 40 or 50" feet; the constriction and pressure arc tremendous; one's nose bleeds; it.is like heaven to gee up into the air again. THE GREATEST RISK. "The young skin diver's greatest danger is over-staying under water. -Frequently, as a. result, he collapses as he nears the surface. More than once I have seen a. man come right up beside the canoe, and suddenly, just before lie broke water, his limbs relaxed, his body looked as if he. had a paralytic stroke;' all the remaining air rushed but of his lungs; he began to sink slowly. If there's nobody at hand to jump in and rescue him he sink's to the buttom and drowns. But if you leap right in, grab him and bring him to the surface—a mari weighs little in water—slide him into' the canoe, and get busy at once;' you may save him. The method is to double him up, jack-knife him, and then work his lungs, just as in resuscitating from immersion. Quickness is the main point, then persistence; it's extraordinary, if you keep at. it lon£ enough, how often you ""can bring a man back who seems gone. '■'As I say, resistance, is gradually built up in these people by their natural mode of life; they progress from one depth to greater ones; they practise:'storing. up and holding air. Formerly' a man would dive in and swim to the bottom.. That, uses up a lot of strength, and wastes' his little reserve of air; nowadays he shoots down, with a weight, as the native pearler of Ceylon does. Once on the bottom a gatherer swims or crawls: about, grabs the shell he can ■■ reach, tears ■it v loose and drops it in the basket bag; theu leaving the filled basket to be drawn up, he springs to. the surface. 'As'ha catches hold of the canoe you can see the veins »tanding out on his face and arms; his Whole body seems to be ..bursting. <• He hangs there till his pressure becomes nov« mal; then comes aboard and draws in deep breaths while 'he rests. THREE MINUTES LIMIT. "I believe it would be' impossible for a white man to train himself, to do this work unless he began as a .baby like these islanders. There are trick performers in. shows who, 1 ani told, can stay: under for three minutes. ■ Perhaps they can—l never saw it—but just let one- of- them try it under the pressure of the 00 -to' 121) foot depths. That's quite another matter. . "Three minutes seems to be the limit of the best skin divers if they're doing any; work —whe'thev it's at 40ft or a hundred. I've always had a belief that an. occasional expert might be able, as a stunt, to stay down five minutes, keeping perfectly quiet; but I've never seen it done. The greatest depth possible is 120 ft;' a good man will send up a surprising amount of shell from that depth within ISO seconds which must include getting to the bottom and returning to the surface: I'think'the finest skin diver I've found"was a chap in one of the Paumotu islets. He was about .30, and he had an extraordinary natural gift for it; at the greatest depth he'd work his full time, over and. over, with no-evi-dence of effort, just like some,'. perfect machine. Like all his fellows, he was massaged, with coconut oil night a.nd ' morning, and his body was, like, a glistening bronze statue. He never seemed, .to. be out of condition; even first-class men.will not work at it if they have a touch'of indigestion or a cold, or if-there is too much, swell on. This fellow was exceptional in, not showing the inevitable strain from that pressure. You don't see' many old men. diving; undoubtedly it tends to shorten life. This is far niorc, true, among the Arabs and Malays than-the Polynesians. "The bends or caisson disease, to- which any diver, clothed or naked, or'working in a diving bell, is subject, is due to coming from a high pressure too suddenly to a lower one—especially if the-period-of "highest pressure lias been long. Under the pressure, air .nitrojren, dissblves in the blood; a sudden change liberates this in bubbles, which in the spinal cord -many cause paralysis; in the.ear'labyrinth, vertigo; in the heart, stoppage or circulation; at the joints they may clog the'fine .blood vessels, causing the characteristic bending, cramping, or twisting. ' PARALYSIS WAITS. ''There is a somewhat different, effect on the skin diver. At 120 ft he is under a stnin of nearly 701b to each square inch. of his body, not far from'five/times the normal air pressure on land. "There is a resultant bursting pressure,'from his straining to resist this and to retain the equalising air, in his hmgs. Anyhow, paralysis ever waits to seize the reckless. "The skin diver needs to watch out' for otocpus, shark, and barracuda, and for the giant moray eels, sometimes ■■ -o.ver 10£b long and armed with wicked sharp teeth. The giant clam, too, is a trap" for the unwary native., These monsters grow, to a size of three or four feet across, weighing the better part of a ton—they are heavily, crusted over with sea growths, and a naked foot may slip right between the valve* unawares; they clamp . together' with a crushing force, and the luckless diver is in a bear trap at the bottom of the ocean, A man by himself grabs his big knife and . tries to reach the hinge;' if that fails, the one chance—a native can. do it far more readily than a white man—is to hack his leg off. > , "The native diver gets no wages. He is -signed on at a franc or a shilling a month. His real payment is an allowance of so much on each toil of shell he fetches up. He doesn't do badly on that- basis,, when he's working on thjit beautiful Macassar shell, for instance, with its gold or silver tinge, classed as prime numbpr "1, and fetching £ISO or more a tori for fancy lots. When you strike a good bed, where tha live oysters run-to .121b apiece, &ii: expert native"rolls up a good tally." . ..... -