Queensland
government in 1897, showed that in good weather at a depth of eight or
ten fathoms, a diver works from sunrise to sunset, coming to the
surface only a few times. In a depth of over fifteen fathoms the
attendant usually has instructions not to let him remain longer than
fifteen minutes at a time ; yet a diver's eagerness in working where
good shell is plentiful sometimes impels him to order the attendant to
disregard this rule. The very great pressure of the water —amounting to
thirty-nine pounds or more to the square inch—is liable to cause
paralysis, and death occasionally results. In working at a depth of
twenty to twenty-five fathoms, a diver is rarely under water longer
than half an hour altogether during the day. The greatest depth from
which shell is brought appears from the same evidence to be "30 fathoms
and a little over"; but at that depth—where the pressure is
seventy-eight pounds to the square inch—the fisherman remains down
only a few minutes at a stretch, and should be exceedingly careful. The
work is injurious, and even under the best conditions the diver not
infrequently becomes semi-paralyzed and disqualified in a few years.
Notwithstanding that the work is performed by men in vigorous health,
nearly every year there are from ten to twenty-five deaths in the
Queensland fleet alone;1 three fourths of these are due to
paralysis, and most of the remaining result from suffocation, owing
largely to inexperience in use of gear. From five to ten years is the
usual length of a man's diving career, although in the fleet may be
found men who have been diving for twenty-five years or more.
On
the vessels manned by Japanese, commonly several members of the crew
are competent divers and take a turn at the work, although only one
license is secured. Such a vessel carries only one head-piece, but two
otherwise complete suits, the helmet fitting either, so that as soon as
one exhausted diver comes up to rest, a successor is ready to have the
helmet screwed to his body-dress and descend without delay, thus saving
about half an hour in the changing.
The
nude divers in the Australian pearl fisheries are mostly Malays and
Australian aborigines. They work from dinghys operated from a vessel,
each dinghy carrying six or eight divers, usually with a white man as
overseer. The man in charge sculls against the tide to keep the boat
stationary over the ground, and all the fishermen of a particular
dinghy descend together for greater safety from sharks, and to cover
the ground systematically. On rising, each diver swims to the boat,
throws his catch over the gunwale, and climbs in to rest for a few
minutes. Sometimes two or possibly even three oysters may be
1 "Report of Departmental Commission on Pearl Shell and Béche-de-Mer Fisheries,"
Brisbane, 1897.
