Beyond those inherent to the art of diving, either method has its peculiar difficulties after bottom is reached. In naked diving, especially at the shoals of Ceylon and Venezuela, where the shells are small and abundant, it is simply a question of gathering as many as possible while the breath lasts and looking out for the dangerous fishes indigenous to tropical waters.
Sharks are common in many of the pearl-oyster seas, but experienced divers do not fear them greatly, as the fish, formidable as it may appear, and dangerous as it is when it can come upon one unawares, is easily frightened. Many expert swimmers of the Indian and Pacific oceans do not hesitate to attack them in their own element. Usually vigorous splashing will frighten them away. The dress-divers of 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 to breathe while at work, it also entails dangers and difficulties from which the old method is free. An imperfect supply of air may cause the bursting of a blood-vessel. Fouling of the lines might not only cut off the air supply entirely, but prevent the man, anchored by his heavy dress under twenty fathoms of water more or less, from signalling the man at the life-line. As on dry land, there are holes and precipices at the bottom of the sea to be avoided.
In some seas there are swift currents and as the dress-diver remains under water for some time, instead of returning at once like his naked brother, he must keep moving with it, and as he moves, the boat must move in unison and his tender must keep the lines free. Both diver and tender must be skilful and alert to do this. Nor is it always easy in deep-sea diving to find the oysters. They lie in scattered bunches, often hidden by sponges, coral or other sea growths, their gray or moss-grown exteriors scarcely to be distinguished from the surroundings; if in mud, only an inch or so of the sharp lips of the two valves projecting above the surface are in evidence; while if in stooping to gather the shells he should fall, he is likely to shoot feet foremost to the surface.
Though dress-diving has heretofore been confined almost entirely to white men, the Japanese, Chinese, Malays, South Sea Islanders, and others in different places, are now being educated to it chiefly through an Australian fishery.
At the northwestern corner of Australia, a thousand miles from the nearest railroad and ten days from the nearest port, there are pearl fisheries where the climate is so hot that white men cannot be obtained for the work. Colored men are shipped there from Singapore to man the boats, the pearl-fishers giving a bond to the government of 100 pounds sterling for each man employed, as a guarantee that he will not go to other parts of the state. A fleet of about three hundred boats and fifteen hundred men are employed there, the supply station being at Broome township.
In all things, when once the improvements of science gain a foothold anywhere in the world, the whole earth succumbs eventually to their advantages, and so with diving; the habits and prejudices of thousands of years will be forced by commercial pressure to submit themselves to modern appliances, and the picturesque nakedness of the swarthy orient will soon be hidden under the ugly but useful dress of civilization.