FATAL LURE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 145, 23 June 1930, Page 8

FATAL LURE

DIVING FOR PEARLS

(From "The Port's" Representative.)SYDNEY, 18th June.

Each year pearl shell to. the value of £250,000 is fished from Australian waters by Japanese divers, and the discovery of new beds in the Gulf of Carpentaria has added fresh impetus to the industry. In their ■ eagerness to outdo one another, the Japanese divers, encased in rubber suits and leaden helmets and boots, daily risk their lives at depths sometimes more than 40 fathoms, where the pressure is sometimes so great that it sometimes bursts the' suit. Sometimes a diver is hauled to the deck of a lugger with blood pouring from his ears, nose, and mouth. His eyes are glassy, and his limbs are stricken with paralysis. Helpless, he is again encased in the ; suit, and sent down to tho depths once more, in tho hope that tho pressure will once again relax his limbs. If it does not his fate, if not death, is something worse— paralysis for life.' But-, the Japanese are philosophical. They know the risks that they take, and ,thoy are prepared to take it in the feverish ' search fcjj the' treasures of the deep. The second death this season was reported to tho police at Thursday Island this week when a.lugger brought in the body of Banzo Mara-1 moto, who was asphyxiated when his j air pipe to the lugger, 30 fathoms above where ho was operating, became entangled in the propeller and broke.' Owing to.the enormous pressure of the water there was no time to haul tho victim to the surface before his supply of oxygen failed.