PERILS OF THE DEEP

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 March 1927, Page 11

PERILS OF THE DEEP

SHARKS? Diver Albert laughs at) them, j He treats sharks like flies. He .just brushes them away and goes on with his

work. It isn’t sharks that a diver need fear. Nor squids, nor octopi, nor giant clams. The plain fact of the matter is that a diver, in diving costume, is perfectly safe from all the romantic terrors that, the novelist likes to draw.

There is just one thing that is fatal to divers. It’s a variety of starfish. And what it does to divers, and the reason why, are just a few of the fascinating reminiscences recounted by Diver Albert to a' Sydney Sun representative recently, when he returned from Melbourne, fresh from raising the submarine 14.

“A lot of people talk about the dreadful risk divers run from being- amongst 400 pearl divers in costume in Torres Strait, West Australia, and attacked by sharks,” he remarked. “In my opinion it’s all nonsense. A shark will, never attack a man in diving costume.

“Sharks are probably the most timid animals in existence. If they see a diver in costume, the mere sight, and the strangeness of it, are enough to send them swimming away in the opposite direction. 5 Of course, this doesn’t apply to black divers, who wear no costume. I have seen many of these men attacked by sharks. On the Ninety-Mile Reach, at Broome, I saw a native come up with the whole of his side ripped open by a shark. He died almost immediately, and the rest of the natives would not work all that day. All of these black divers prefer to work alongside an apparatusdiver, simply for the protection from sharks. “In the whole of mv life I have never had any trouble with sharks. They have never even come near me. The only time when there is anything to fear is when you step on one by accident. Sometimes you find them asleep in the sand on the bottom, half-buried, and almost invisible. If you happen to stand on one you will find yourself overbalanced by the jump he gives, but in most cases the shark simply swims away.

CHANCES THE DIVER TAKES

SHARKS THE LEAST OF THEM

“Another popular fallacy is that an octopus means death to a diver. This is another fairv tale. If an octopus does get hold of you—and it’s a thousand to one he won’t—if you stop there long enough he’ll gradually release you, or else put himself in such a position that you can thrust your hand inside his mouth and turn his head inside out. This is an argument which always settles an octopus. He’ll give you a couple of squeezes, and then relax, finished.

“1 was working in the Vancouver rip once with another diver, and we struck an octopus that measured fully 36ft from tip to tip. He came right over us, and we simply waited our opportunity to chop him with a crowbar. We were laying water pipes at the time. As soon as we hit him he wrapped his tentacles round us, but I managed to do the old trick of pulling his head inside out, and he soon fell back ex- \

hausted. When we got him up we exhibited him on Victoria Island.

“An octopus has no teeth c:ily a bag-liko head, with a large beak buried under his body. But you can’t see the beak unless he tries to grab hold of something.

“The fish that, really is dangerous to divers is a large variety of star-fish. At least, it is shaped like a star-fish. It has two big horns projecting each side, spread in a wide V. This fish is incapable of swimming backwards, or turning. It simply goes along in a straight line. And if anything happens to get in the way of its horns, or gets caught between them, you can say good-bye to it. The fish has enormous strength, and lets nothing stop it. It can pull a ton weight.

“I have often struck cases of Schooners getting their chains caught by one of these monsters, and being towed helplessly for some distance, without anybody on board knowing what has. happened.

“But as for sharks, the only divers who need fear them are the blacks who go in pearlshelling without any costume. In West Australia, on pearling stations years ago. all that these divers got for their labour was a pair of trousers each, some tobacco and blankets, for six months’ work.”