The pearl fishery and the isolated leper station are the principal claims which attract the attention of the outside world to the island of Penrhyn or Tongareva, one of the Manahiki group, in Lat. 9° S., and Long. 158° W. This desolate atoll island consists of a ring of land a few hundred yards in width, inclosing a lagoon nine miles long and five miles wide, and it produces little else than pearls and pearl shell. The white gravelly shore yields little vegetation except cocoanuts, which share with fish in furnishing sustenance to the semi-amphibious natives.
At Penrhyn the pearl fishery is carried on in the clear, limpid waters of the atoll where the oysters are undisturbed by storms. The shells belong mostly to the golden-edged variety, and are of good quality, the value in London ranging from £100 to £250 per ton. Relatively few pearls are found, amounting in aggregate value to only about one fourth of the value of the shells. These are the principal objects of the fishery; the finding of pearls is incidental, but careful search is always made for them, and some choice specimens have been secured.
On the coast of New Caledonia, pearling is of recent origin, dating as an industrial enterprise from 1897, although previous to that time some shells and pearls had been secured by native beach-combers. This island is 220 miles in length and 30 in width, situated 850 miles southeast of Australia, and about the same distance from New Zealand. It is a French colony, and has been used by that government as a penal settlement since 1864.
In 1897, rich beds of pearl-oysters were discovered off the west coast of this island. They are most numerous between the shore and the barrier reefs on the west coast from Pouembout River to Gomen Bay, and especially about the small island of Konienne at the mouth of the Pouembout River. They are also abundant among the Loyalty Islands off the eastern coast of New Caledonia, and especially at the island of Lifu.[[243]] The shell is similar to that from Torres Straits, and the yield of pearls is very large. Several concessions have been obtained to exploit these beds, one of them covering 130 miles in length. The industry is carried on by means of scaphanders, in a manner similar to that of Torres Straits. Virtually all of the catch is sent to France.
The natives of the South Sea Islands, and particularly of Penrhyn and the Tuamotu group, are doubtless the most expert divers in the world. This can be readily appreciated by those who have read of Hua Manu in C. W. Stoddard’s thrilling narrative, or have heard the story of the brown woman who swam for forty hours in a storm with a helpless husband on her back. Accustomed to the water from infancy, these human otters swim all day long as readily as they would walk, go miles from shore without a boat in search of fish which they take by means of baited hook and line, and boldly attack a shark single-handed. Seemingly fabulous stories are told of their descending, unaided, 150 feet or more beneath the surface, and remaining at lesser depths for nearly three minutes, far surpassing any modern records of the divers of India.
The water in the South Seas is wonderfully clear, enabling the fishermen to detect small objects at considerable depths, and especially so when using the water-telescope, similar to that employed in the Red Sea fisheries. By immersing this to a depth of several inches and cutting off the light from the upper end as he gazes through it down into the waters, the fisherman can readily inspect the bottom at a depth of fifteen fathoms, and thus locate the shells before he descends.
The diving is quite unlike that in Ceylon and Arabia. The men do not descend on stones, but swim to the bottom. The diver is stripped to his paréu or breech-clout, his right hand is protected by a cotton mitten or by only a wrapping of cotton cloth, and in his left hand he carries a pearl shell to assist in directing his movements and in detaching the oysters at the bottom. In preparing for a deep descent, he sits for several minutes in characteristic attitude with hands hanging over knees, and repeatedly inflates his lungs to the fullest capacity, exhaling the air slowly through his mouth. After five or six minutes of “taking the wind,” the diver inhales a good breath, drops over the gunwale into the water to give him a start, and descends feet foremost. At a distance of twelve or fifteen feet below the surface, gracefully as an otter or a seal, he bends forward and turns head downward and, with limbs showing dimly in frog-like motion, he swims vertically the remaining distance to the bottom. There he assumes a horizontal position and swims slowly just above the ground, searching critically for suitable oysters, in this way traversing a distance possibly of fifty feet or more. When he has secured an oyster, or his breath is approaching exhaustion, he springs from the ground in an erect position and rapidly swims upward, the buoyancy of his body hastening his ascent so that he pops head and shoulders above the surface, and falls back with laboring pulse and panting breath. In case the dive has been unusually extended, a few drops of blood may trickle from the nose and mouth. His find—consisting frequently of nothing and rarely of more than one oyster—is carried in a cocoanut fiber sack suspended from the neck, or is held in the left hand, or may be hugged beneath the left arm.
Ordinarily in actual fishing operations, the fishermen do not descend to greater depths than fifteen fathoms, and remain from sixty to ninety seconds. Writing in 1851, a trader who had spent several years in collecting pearls and pearl shells among the Tuamotus stated: “I timed several by the watch, and the longest period I knew any of them to keep beneath the water was a minute and a quarter, and there were only two who accomplished this feat. Rather less than a minute was the usual duration. It is unusual for them to attempt deep diving; and let the shells be ever so abundant, they will come up and swear there are none.”[[244]]
However, in mutual contests or in special exhibitions, reports of twenty, twenty-three, and even twenty-five fathoms are numerous, and they have repeatedly been timed two and a half to three minutes. Bouchon-Brandely speaks of a woman at Anaa, one of the Tuamotus, who would go down twenty-five fathoms and remain three minutes under water.[[245]] This seems very unusual, but there are numerous reports of two and a half minutes at about seventeen or eighteen fathoms. In October, 1899, at Hikueru Island, another of the Tuamotu group, a young native made an exhibition dive for the officers of the United States Fish Commission steamship Albatross. He reached bottom at a depth of 102 feet under the boat’s keel, and remained submerged two minutes and forty seconds. The water was so transparent that he was clearly seen from the surface. After he touched bottom at that great depth, he calmly picked over the coral and shells to select a piece to bring up.[[246]] The diver was ready to go down again only a few minutes after he came up.
In his work on French Oceanica, Chartier states: “There are three women well known in the archipelago [of Tuamotu] who have no equals elsewhere; they explore the depth at twenty-five fathoms and remain not less than three minutes before reappearing at the surface.”[[247]] However, these unusual depths and extensions of time are dangerous, and care must be taken or serious results follow. Most of the catch is obtained in about ten fathoms of water.