Scuba diving

“ 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. ”

“ The longest time that a natural diver has been known to remain beneath the surface is about two minutes. Some pearl and sponge divers rub their bodies with oil, and put wool, saturated with oil, in their ears. Others hold in their mouth a piece of sponge soaked in oil, which they renew every time they descend. It is doubtful, however, whether these expedients are beneficial. The men who dive in this primitive fashion take with them a flat stone with a hole in the centre; to this is attached a rope, which is secured to the diving boat and serves to guide them to particular spots below. ”

“ There is another department of the art now under consideration, in which our friend greatly excelled, namely, that of diving. There are few divers who do not feel a kind of exultation in their power over the element, and in their ability to move under the surface of the water with ease and pleasure. Half a century ago, diving was a difficult and dangerous art, demanding great skill and endurance; but modern science has given the professional diver an almost perfect accoutrement, by means of which he can literally walk down to the bottom of the sea, and telegraph for as much air as he requires. ”

“ When the deep-water boats reach the fishing grounds, half the crew is selected for diving. The diver uses a small braided mat basket as a receptacle for the shells and has a long line attached to him by which he can signal to the man in the boat who manages it. There is a man to each diver's line. Except for the short intervals at the surface necessary for air and rest, the divers remain in the water for hours. The oyster-beds vary in depth from six to eighteen feet in the shallows, to forty feet at the banks. ”

“ As diving is a very large subject, it is impossible to give in detail all the varied dives. There are three important dives everyone should know—the front, back, and shallow or racing dive. The beauty of diving is in the form.
The Front Dive.—The diver stands erect at the end of the spring board, falls forward, then as the body passes the balance point, the arms are raised straight over the head, knees bent; then spring out so that the body is parallel to water, arms above head; the body is curved downward and enters the water, arms, head, body, and legs forming a straight line. ”

“ An hour afterward the raft and all the instruments necessary for the enterprise had drifted down to the bank where the boats were waiting.
The diving-dress is well known. By its means men can descend beneath the waters and remain there a certain time without the action of the lungs being in any way injured. The diver is clothed in a waterproof suit of India rubber, and his feet are attached to leaden shoes, which allow him to retain his upright position beneath the surface. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The best method of learning to dive is to stand on the side of the bath or on the bank of the river, and then stoop down until the body is nearly double, stretch out the arms in front of the head, sink the head between them and gradually fall over into the water. The ability to enter the water head first will then soon be acquired. To begin, the legs should be placed together and the body kept erect, then a few short inspirations should be made and the lungs cleared and inflated, the arms should be swung from the front and a spring made from the diving base. ”

“ Diving is a necessary part of a swimmer’s knowledge, and once the learner has mastered the simple strokes, there is but one way to enter the water—head first. What is known as the low or shallow dive is not only the best for the beginner, but is useful when one advances to the racing stage in their experience, while being the easiest to learn. To make a good dive, stand perfectly erect, with the hands first placed at the sides of the body, the position being the same as you would assume when making a broad jump. ”

“ In a few places where the beds lie in shallow inlets and sheltered bays they can be dredged, but almost universally the oysters are gathered by divers. During the greater part of the year, when storms [178] rage, diving is very dangerous if not quite impossible; but when the song of the sea is hushed to low crooning, and the gentle roll of the waves does no more than playfully slap the boats in passing, then in the seas where men dive for pearls they gather to the harvest of gems.
There are two ways of diving—naked, and with dress. ”

“ A chap will dive all day for the fun of it and half a stick of tobacco, but you can do most of the diving yourselves and save on the business. There are the diving suits, two of them. Good as when I got them, and the pump’s in the boat there; she’s in that canoe house, it’s a Clarkson, in good order. Say, boys, you’ve no reason to sneeze over this deal. Here’s an island, a living larder, pigs and fowl and taro and fish and fruit for nix, a pearl lagoon not half worked, diving suits and pump and a bit of trade, and all for that frousty old brown boat of yours. ”

“ Swimming on the back is easily learned and is not only a pretty trick but is very useful in giving us an opportunity to rest on a long swim.
Diving is also a branch of swimming that requires confidence rather than lessons. A dive is simply a plunge head first into the water. A graceful diver plunges with as little splash as possible. It is very bad form either to bend the knees or to strike on the stomach, the latter being a kind of dive for which boys have a very expressive though not elegant name. ”

“ The divers use stones on which they descend feet foremost. Although this is less spectacular than the method of diving practised by the natives of the South Sea islands, it enables the fisherman to reach the bottom more speedily and with far less effort. The diving-stones range in weight from thirty to fifty pounds each, depending largely on the depth of water and the weight of the fisherman. ”

“ Nor is a delay necessary in hoisting the diver clad in the new diving apparatus to the surface. According to the British Admiralty regulations, should a diver go down to a depth of 204 feet, the time of his ascent must be not less than one hour and a half. In the Long Island Sound experiments the diver was hoisted to the surface in eighty-seven seconds. He was totally unaffected by the abrupt change in pressure, although the deepest he had ever been was ninety feet, and on that occasion he had suffered from bleeding at the nose and ears.
Why do We Smile when We are Pleased? ”

“ Most of the underwater boats to-day sink rapidly on an even keel. The old method of depressing the nose of the boat so as to make a literal dive has been abandoned, partly because of the inconvenience it caused to the men within who suddenly found the floor on which they were standing tilted at a sharp angle, and partly because the diving position proved to be a dangerous one for the boat. ”

“ Men of good constitution and resourcefulness are needed for the profession of diving. Only a few can work at extreme depths, though an old hand is able to remain for several hours at a time in sixty feet of water. The record depth reached by a diver is claimed by James Hooper, who, when removing the cargo of the Cape Horn, wrecked off the coast of South America, made seven descents to 201 feet, one of which lasted forty-two minutes. ”

“ These are examples of unassisted diving as practised by the Ancients. Their primitive method, however, is still in vogue in some parts of the world—notably in the Ceylon pearl fisheries and in the Mediterranean sponge fisheries, and it may, therefore, be as well to mention the system adopted by the natural, or naked, diver of to-day.
The volume and power of respiration of the lungs vary in different individuals, some persons being able to hold their breath longer than others, so that it naturally follows that one man may be able to stay longer under water than another. ”

“ The whole science of diving depends upon the spring taken before leaping into the water—that is, the diver should be careful to give enough spring to throw his body sufficiently forward to give the legs time to follow a curve, otherwise the body will fall flat on the water, and this might result in serious injury to the performer. ”

“ With the use of this apparatus another advantage is gained. When the diver is down the air he expires rises in bubbles to the surface, and by the regularity with which they rise his condition can be easily known. If they cease, it is known that something must have happened, and that he should be instantly hauled up. In the old diving dress the expired air passed into the space between his body and the clothing and out at a valve in the helmet, but as the excess of air supplied to him escaped in this way also, it could not be told from this whether the diver was alive or dead. ”

“ THE MECHANISM OF DIVING Diving being a profession which can be carried on in its simplest form with the simplest possible apparatus—merely a rope and a stone—its history reaches back into the dim and inexplorable past. We may well believe that the first man who explored the depths of the sea for treasure lived as long ago as the first seeker for minerals in the bosom of the earth. Even when we come to the various appliances which have been gradually developed in the course of centuries, our records are very imperfect. ”

“ The man of the atolls is in a world of his own where none but his kind can follow, and they still squat on their outriggers, chatting and laughing like a crowd of boys at a swimming pool.
One alone seems interested in the diver's movements: his mate, a fair-skinned woman, with streaming blue-black hair, leans over the gunwale of the canoe, looking down through a kerosene tin water-glass.
The diver's dark figure against the pale-green coral becomes more blurred; a stream of silver air bubbles floats upward. ”

“ After a person has mastered the first rudiments of swimming, such as the back, breast, and floating strokes, he is naturally anxious to learn to dive. There is nothing more fascinating to a swimmer than a sharp, clean plunge into cool water.
The whole secret of diving is the possession of plenty of pluck and self-confidence. One need not be an expert swimmer to be a good diver. In fact, some persons can dive very well and at the same time are mediocre swimmers. As in other branches, practise makes perfect. ”

“ Frequently as we sailed over the placid sea, little diving ducks would flap the waters in a race from the ship's hull, and when a hundred feet off would dive for a score or more feet, perfectly satisfied that by their dive they had hidden their tracks from the mighty monster. ”

“ On reaching the fishing-ground the sambûk anchors, under the shelter of a reef, perhaps miles out to sea, or perhaps near some islet or sandbank. The canoes with which it is loaded are launched and two men paddle away in each. Though both can dive they go in pairs distinguished as “captain” and “paddler,” the former being chosen for good eyesight and skill in distinguishing the pearl shells from the weeds, sponge, and stones among which they grow. A bad captain “sees every stone as a shell” which results in waste of energy in useless diving. ”

“ The dome, when down, serves to protect the divers, so that at any time they can go down to regulate the working of the drills, or perform any other service. Without this protection, the divers could not keep their feet, so strong is the current on a rising or falling tide. The divers are protected by a diving suit; the air is furnished them by a pipe to the back of the helmet they wear, and is forced down by an air pump. When a set of holes are drilled, they are charged with nitro-glycerine, and simultaneously exploded by electricity. ”

“ The native descends naked, carrying only a girdle for the support of the basket in which he places the pearl oysters. In his submarine work the diver makes skilful use of his toes. To arm himself against the attacks of the sharks and other fishes which infest the Indian waters he carries spikes of ironwood; and the genuine Indian diver never descends without the incantations of shark-charmers, one of whom accompanies the boat while others remain on shore. As a rule the diver is a short-lived man.
The diving continues from sunrise to about noon, when a gun is fired. ”

“ The helmet contains a supply of compressed oxygen, and the exhaled breath is passed through a filter in the breast-piece which deprives it of its carbonic acid, while the nitrogen goes back into the helmet to be mixed with the oxygen, the supply of which is under the diver's own control, and to be breathed over again. A diver has remained for an hour and a half under 35 feet of water in this dress. The safe limit for diving is 200 to 300 feet, the deepest dive in this country being 210 feet; but great care must be exercised in bringing the diver to the surface. ”