And as I started to pack the diving gear and cameras for our early-morning departure on the Gahleru, I suddenly remembered an odd coincidence. Everyone who has ever seen the soft light of the corona reaching out around the sun has used the same adjective to describe it—and that adjective is “pearly.”
XVI
Through the Torres Straits
The Gahleru pulled out of T.I. harbor at seven o’clock in the morning, into the teeth of a twenty-knot wind which soon brought the waves smashing into the scuppers. We sat on deck, talking to the crew and taking photographs whenever the spray allowed us to uncover the cameras. The ship’s complement consisted of four whites and five colored: the skipper, Bill Parker; the research station’s technical assistant, Dave Tranter; Mike and myself; Horace and Gordon, the divers; Johnnie and Korea, their tenders; and Stephen, deck hand and cook. The four whites became more and more dusky during the course of the voyage, through the positive effect of sunlight and the negative effect of washing in salt water; but the rest of the crew always managed to keep a few shades ahead of us.
After seven hours’ cruising in a northeasterly direction from T.I., we anchored off the low, mangrove-fringed beach of Long Island. The dinghy was lowered, and a small expedition equipped with spears, rifles, and Leicas landed on the dead coral strand. It was a lonely place, but far from lifeless, as the cries of unknown birds, disturbed by our presence, came echoing out of the jungle.
The beach was about a hundred yards wide, and consisted entirely of fragments of dead coral which had been smoothed by the waves and bleached a nondescript gray by the sun. There was no sand whatsoever, at least on this side of the island. We walked for a mile along the flat carpet formed by this coral graveyard, coming occasionally across larger boulders which had not yet been broken down by the waves.
Gordon, who had brought a spear, waded through the shallows jabbing occasionally at a passing fish, though without any success at all. Johnnie had disappeared with a large sack and a metal spike, looking for a sandy beach beneath which turtle eggs might be buried. The technique for finding turtle eggs is quite simple; you walk along likely sections of the beach, jabbing your spike into the sand until it comes up sticky and with sand glued to it. Then you start digging, and a foot down you will come across a hundred or so white and leathery eggs, looking exactly like somewhat dented ping-pong balls.
Mike and I, on the lookout for crocodiles, crept along the edge of the mangrove swamp with gun and camera at the alert. A mangrove forest is a mysterious and rather depressing place, with its mixture of sunlight and shadow, its slow streams winding through the tangled maze of roots. Each mangrove tree, to anchor itself in the wet and shifting soil, is supported by a widespread system of roots which begins a yard or more from the ground, and resembles the flying buttresses of a medieval cathedral.
We met no crocodiles, which was disappointing but may have been lucky, for in this part of the world they grow to twenty-five feet in length. But we did come across the largest and most magnificent crab I have ever seen, which crouched in a rock pool and waved its huge claws menacingly at us as we approached. Gordon, moving with extreme caution, crept up on it from the rear and grabbed it at the base of the claws, so that it could only snap at the empty air. To give it something to grasp, we rather foolishly let it grip the stock of Mike’s brand-new rifle, and there was a crunching sound as the hard wood caved in beneath the great pincers. It was perfectly obvious that this crab could have performed a minor amputation with the greatest of ease.
On our way back to the Gahleru, we met Johnnie, who was briskly scooping turtle eggs out of a patch of sand he had found in the shade of the mangrove trees. Later I sampled one of these eggs, but as the ship was rolling badly at the time I lacked the enthusiasm needed to make such an experiment a success. It tasted powdery, but not unpleasant, and I have no doubt one could get quite used to it in time. It was an interesting object lesson to see how two men, in about half an hour’s walk along an apparently barren beach, could collect enough food for a dozen meals. Certainly no one need starve to death on one of these islands, though his diet might eventually prove a little monotonous.
We had missed the tide and it was too late to do any diving that day. As soon as the sun went down, and we had tuned in to T.I. radio to see if it had any messages for us, we all climbed into our bunks. The gentle rocking of the ship as it lay at anchor off the reef was very restful, and by the fantastic hour of 7 P.M. we were all fast asleep. I cannot truthfully pretend that the Gahleru was completely free from cockroaches, but at least they were not the large, carnivorous variety, and we were not awakened by any attacks on our toes.
We were up with first light and breakfasted on fried bread and jam, washed down with cups of sweet tea. The sky was cloudy, the wind slight, but the water was so turbid that it looked like blue milk. Though there was little chance of seeing much, we decided to test out the diving gear we had brought with us.
At this point, it is necessary to say something about the type of diving equipment used in the pearling industry—equipment which has remained virtually unchanged for half a century, but which is now definitely obsolete. Everyone is familiar with the standard diving suit, with its goggle-eyed helmet and air hose leading to a compressor on the surface. The Torres Straits divers use the helmet and corselet only, without any rubber suit. They wear canvas shoes and an old pair of trousers to protect themselves from coral scratches, and the helmet sits on their shoulders by its own weight. There are not even any straps to hold it in place; it is, essentially, nothing more than a little chamber full of air, a one-man diving bell, sitting over the diver’s head. Unless he keeps upright, the helmet will fill with water; if the compressor fails, the same thing will happen. Nevertheless, a diver working under these conditions is probably better off than one inside a suit; if anything goes wrong, he can duck out of the helmet and swim unencumbered back to the surface. This helmet-and-corselet working (the corselet is simply the shoulder piece carrying the lead weights) is, of course, possible only in waters which are so warm that a man can stay submerged for hours without discomfort.
A life line is attached to the helmet (not to the diver) so that he can signal to his tender, and get pulled up whenever he wishes. On more than one occasion, a helmet has been pulled up with no diver in it....
The discomfort and danger of working under such conditions, often more than a hundred feet down in water where visibility is less than ten feet, are not easy to imagine unless one has tried it. The boat is not at anchor, but drifts before the wind and the divers have to keep up with it. This means that they may have to walk briskly along the sea bed, grabbing any shell as they pass it—for they will not have another chance as their life line and air hose drag them along. Pearl shell is not easy to see as it lies on the bottom, for its drab exterior gives no hint of the iridescent beauty within, and it is often covered with weed and coral growths. As it is picked up, the shell is dropped in a net bag which the diver has hooked in front of his chest.
When the boat has drifted right across the patch of shell, the diver will signal to be pulled up and will dump his load on deck. The lugger will then retrace its track to the original starting point, when the diver will go down again and work another drift parallel to the first, so that eventually the whole patch will have been worked over. A pearling lugger will normally have at least three divers working on the bottom at once, and sometimes as many as four.
This procedure is all very well when the bottom is flat, but if it is rugged the diver’s task is both difficult and dangerous. His lines may be “snagged,” and the movement of the ship may drag him under overhanging rocks. He may step into an unexpected crevasse, and be crushed by the sudden change in pressure as he drops into deeper water—for the compressor supplying him with air cannot automatically compensate for a large variation in depth. All these hazards are quite apart from the intrinsic dangers of diving—the menace of sharks, manta, and giant grouper, the more seri
ous and ever-present peril of the “bends” as nitrogen bubbles are absorbed into the blood. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that according to some estimates more than a thousand divers have lost their lives in the Torres Straits since pearl was discovered there. During a relatively short period as trainer-diver on one lugger, Mike had seen one of his colleagues killed (through being accidentally dropped nineteen fathoms) and another paralyzed by the “bends.”
Pearl diving will never be a safe occupation, but there is no doubt that it can be made much safer. Modern, self-contained breathing gear like the Aqualung or the Porpoise sets we had been using is not practical when one has to stay underwater for many hours, and the air cylinders and the compressors to charge them are too expensive. But by a simple modification this type of equipment can be made ideal for all purposes where the diver is working from a boat on the surface.
Forget all about the massive copper helmet, its tiny little windows and its heavy lead weights. Use instead the simple modern face mask, covering eyes and nose and giving two or three times the area of visibility of the old-fashioned helmet. For breathing, use the Aqualung-type mouthpiece, with its completely automatic control of air flow to the lungs. Instead, however, of feeding it from a cylinder of air at a very high pressure, connect it through a long hose to a small compressor on the surface; the type used to run paint sprayers will do very well.
The diver can now stay underwater as long as he pleases, without worrying about the limited air supply in his cylinder. He can work in any attitude—standing on his head if he feels like it. If he accidentally falls fifty feet, the demand regulator on his mouth will take up the pressure difference without his even noticing it. Moreover, since the functions of breathing and seeing are no longer the responsibility of a single piece of equipment—the helmet—the safety factor is much increased. Should the diver’s hose get entangled, and he be compelled to abandon his equipment, he will still have full vision through his face mask as he swims back to the surface. The psychological importance of this can hardly be exaggerated, and a face mask contains a couple of breaths of air which may make all the difference in an emergency.
Since this type of equipment feeds air to the lungs only when the diver inhales, it is far more economical than the helmet, which is spilling out air in one continuous stream. We had some difficulty in persuading the divers that this was actually an advantage, since they felt that a constant stream of bubbles helped to scare away sharks. However, we were able to demonstrate that the diver could always produce a cloud of bubbles when he wanted to, by inhaling and exhaling rapidly.
We had flown up with us two sets of this aptly named “Hookah” equipment, together with sixty feet of hose. It had been Mike’s idea; I had not been at all keen on encumbering ourselves with additional gear which we might never get round to using. The two pipe lines were plugged into a T-joint we had had fitted to the Gahleru’s compressor, and watched with vast interest by the native crew, Mike prepared to descend. He took with him Dave Tranter, who had never used the gear before but was accustomed to the helmet and corselet.
They buckled on the harness, adjusted their face masks and lead weights, and disappeared over the side, their tenders playing out air pipe and safety lines. We saw their two streams of bubbles bursting intermittently on the surface as they exhaled, and the bubbles slowly wandered away from the Gahleru as the divers perambulated along the sea bed. They were not down for very long, as there was a strong current and, as Mike put it, they were on “grouper bottom,” meaning that this was the sort of rugged territory in which the giant cod, one of the most dangerous of sea beasts, was likely to lurk. Big groupers have jaws three or four feet across, and have been known to bite off legs and arms—and occasionally to bisect divers completely.
As soon as Mike returned to the surface, bringing back Dave in good condition, he tried to get the native divers down with the equipment. Here he ran into a little consumer resistance: Horace, the head diver, was too accustomed to helmet and corselet and felt disinclined to try out these new-fangled inventions. Gordon, however, was quite willing to experiment, and let Mike take him down for a brief walk on the bottom.
The weather then became rapidly worse, and further diving was abandoned for the day. Not until the next morning, when the sun was barely above the horizon and the mangrove trees were transformed with the golden glow of the day’s first light, were we able to watch the native divers go down with their conventional equipment.
The Gahleru had two sets of diving gear, the thick red air hoses, more than an inch in diameter, being piled in great coils on a flat platform between the masts. The compressor was driven by the ship’s motor and large air tanks provided a reserve which would allow the divers to return to the surface in the event of a power failure. The normal working pressure in these tanks was about 125 pounds to the square inch, which in theory would allow the divers to go down almost 300 feet. In actual practice, 200 feet is the limit for ordinary working, and it is quite unusual to descend as deeply as this.
Horace and Gordon pulled on their tattered long pants, and adjusted the felt shoulder-padding which takes the weight of the helmet.
Below decks, the compressor was thumping away, charging up the air tank. Johnnie and Korea, the tenders, were cleaning the helmet face-glasses with diluted vinegar, to prevent them from misting up with the diver’s breath. A rope ladder had been hung over the side; Horace walked down it until his head was level with the deck and he was half immersed in the water. There was no other preparation; the helmet was placed on his shoulders, he let go of the ladder, and dropped swiftly out of sight, the life line and air hose being fed out continuously until he had reached the bottom. Gordon followed him a moment later, but both the divers were back on deck almost at once. The current was too strong, and the water too dirty, for them to do any useful work.
We decided to abandon Long Island and try our luck a few miles further on. After bucketing along in very rough seas for several hours, we came to anchor again just off the reef around Poll Island, another small, thickly wooded speck of land like a thousand others in the Great Barrier Reef. Apart from the presence of coconut palms, we might have been back on Heron Island, a thousand miles to the south.
Unable to resist the opportunity to do some exploring, we rowed ashore and started to walk round the island. Mike and Johnnie were carrying fish spears, and waded out in water up to their knees looking for victims. Though they hurled the spears into the sea at least fifty times, they never hit anything. I was deeply disappointed, for I had hoped that Johnnie at any rate would do better, since I had heard so much about the natives’ deadly accuracy when fishing by this means. Angling with hook and line might be less exciting, but appeared to be far more efficient.
There was a great hue and cry once when a couple of sharks swam up to inspect the unsuccessful spear fishers. The swift, streamlined bodies—I got a clear view of the black-tipped dorsal fin of one—came racing in from the edge of the reef and circled round Mike and Johnnie, who hurled their spears like mad and chased after the sharks in a flurry of spray. Once more, all this exertion was in vain, though as nobody particularly cares to have sharks swimming round his ankles it was probably just as well to scare them away.
When we got back to the Gahleru, we found a small shark had been hooked on the line which the boys usually kept dangling over the stern. Mike immediately blasted it with his rifle, which thus secured its first and not very creditable kill. The corpse was then disemboweled and hung over the side, in the hope that it would attract an even larger shark which we could hook and use as bait and so on ad infinitum. Any plans for diving we might have had were promptly forgotten as the blood and guts spread through the water, but as a matter of fact the bait was still quite untouched by the morning.
Since the sea was still rough and underwater visibility was very poor, we made no more attempts at diving on this trip. Instead, we headed south toward the Australian mainland, and passed through the
entrance of the Torres Straits, with Cape York on our left.
It was high tide, and the beach along this lonely coastline was completely submerged. The thickly packed mangrove trees came right down to the water’s edge, and the forest extended unbroken inland as far as the eye could see. This was the fertile, untamed wilderness over which we had flown a week before—the wilderness which stretched for hundreds of miles without a sign of human life.
We made our way slowly along the coast, and presently came to a large bamboo raft anchored half a mile offshore. Since we were now in fairly sheltered waters, the waves had subsided and there was no difficulty in bringing the Gahleru alongside the raft. Dave and a couple of the boys scrambled overboard, balancing precariously on the bamboo poles, and pulled up the chains which were dangling from the raft into the water. From these chains hung metal frameworks holding half a dozen parallel slates; the theory was that the embryo oysters—the “spat”—would settle on these plates so that it could be collected.
The old plates were removed for later study in the lab, and new ones installed. As soon as this task was completed, we sailed further along the coast, until a wide, sandy beach appeared. The massed mangroves were still there, but now there was room to walk between them and the sea. Once again the dinghy was lowered and we rowed away from the Gahleru to see what we could discover.
The Coast of Coral Page 13
