Australia
scare them off by allowing a jet of air to escape. As the bubbles start
for him, the man-eating monster shoots away from them as if
terror-stricken.
The
diamond-flounder of the Pacific and Indian oceans, a huge flat fish
with a habit of seizing its prey between the side fins and crushing it,
is more dangerous. If a dress-diver of experience sees one of these
approaching, he is apt to shut off the air-escape of his helmet and
signal to his tender that he is coming to the surface as fast as he can
get there.
The
rock-cod also is sometimes troublesome on the Australian coast.
Occasionally he attains an enormous size. This fish lies hidden in
submarine caves, his head protruding and his monstrous jaws yawning
vertically wide like an entrance to the cave itself. But accidents
from the denizens of the sea are comparatively few; the physical
results of deep-sea diving are more to be dreaded, for paralysis hovers
close to the thirty-fathom line.
Although dress-diving has the advantage over naked diving that it gives a supply of air
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