Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

When a diver goes down he takes with him a net bag, which he fills with shells. He then jerks the signal rope and is pulled up. The shells are counted and weighed, and he is paid according to what he has found. One diver has a record of having gathered one thousand pairs of shells in a day, but half this number is considered a good showing.

Even with the most modern equipment, one hundred and eighty feet is considered the maximum depth at which divers can work safely, although some have gone to a depth of two hundred or more feet. As the shallower beds have given out, the divers have had to go deeper and deeper and Queensland has made a law forbidding diving below the safety level. But the state courts have held that a diver must actually be seen below that depth before violation of the statute can be proved, and, as the reefs are quite remote and supervision is virtually impossible, the men often take great risks. At one hundred feet below the surface the pressure is sixty pounds to the square inch, and it increases as the diver goes deeper. At a certain depth he is attacked by pains in his muscles and joints, deafness and spells of fainting, and a kind of paralysis called “diver’s palsy.” If he is brought too quickly to the surface the sudden removal of the pressure may cause profuse bleeding or even death. Every year ten per cent. of the Torres Strait divers die from the immediate effects of their calling.

I am told that the profession has other great dangers. The Strait swarms with tiger sharks, which here grow to a length of twenty feet. They follow the pearl luggers, attracted by the pieces of salt beef now and then thrown from the boats. Unless very hungry, they trouble only the naked divers and the man in a suit can open an aircock and make enough bubbles to frighten them away. When the naked diver is attacked by a shark he stirs up the water and thus often confuses his enemy so that he gets back alive, although he may perhaps be maimed for life by the teeth of the terrible fish. As a rule the divers are not afraid of the sharks, but they do not spear fish at the bottom of the sea without first ascertaining whether there are sharks about, for the dead fish would surely draw them.

Another terror is the great squid. This marine monster fastens its long tentacles upon anything within its reach. If disturbed it vomits an inky fluid which discolours the waters about, and the diver, bewildered in the gloom, is liable to fall against the rocks and be caught.

In the native pearl fisheries much of the diving is done by women, who go down without suits. They fasten stones to their feet to enable them to sink, but do not plug up their nostrils and ears as do the pearl divers of India. Most of them can stay under water only a few seconds more than a minute, and they cannot work in such deep waters as the men in diving dress.

Pearls worth one hundred dollars are quite common and a big one, lately discovered, sold for twenty-five hundred dollars. Since an oyster may contain a thousand-dollar pearl, and the pearls are so small they can be easily stolen, the opening of the shells is carefully watched. A knife much like a common table knife, with a thin, flexible blade and a strong handle, is used. A good operator can open a ton of shells in a day and not miss a pearl. The shells containing the pearls have sometimes a curious appearance so that experts can tell before they are opened that they have pearls in them. Such shells are always laid aside to be handled by the proprietor or the foreman of the sloop.

Sometimes one oyster will contain a dozen small pearls and even more. Such oysters are often diseased and their shells are rough, but on the other hand a perfectly healthy oyster may contain a fine round pearl of large size. Many people believe that some irritating substance is the cause of every pearl. Looked at through a microscope, a pearl cut in two shows concentric layers like an onion with a hole, or sometimes a grain of sand in the centre. It is supposed that the grain of sand irritates the oyster so that it exudes carbonate of lime, coating the scratchy particle over and over until there has been formed a smooth round ball that does hot hurt.

The islands about Torres Strait are probably volcanic fragments of the immense continent supposed once to have connected Asia and Australia. Only the larger ones are inhabited.