880 THE WEALTH OF THE SEA 



had received severe wounds on both sides of his body 

 from the teeth of the shark. He was removed at once 

 to a hospital at a neighboring port for a month, and 

 then was sent to his native island where his convales- 

 cence lasted three months. This may seem an incred- 

 ible story, but it is a true one. The man still lives in 

 the island of Calymnos and still follows his dangerous 

 profession. One of the two doctors who attended him 

 was Dr. A. Pelecanos, since dead, who was the father 

 of the narrator of the incident. 



Nude diving requires great skill and training from 

 youth but is not as hazardous as diving in suits or 

 scaphanders ; but neither is it so productive, for the 

 machine diver can work on the bottom a much greater 

 portion of the day. The diving-suit or scaphander 

 was introduced into the sponge fisheries of the 

 ^gean Sea and the Levant about 1866 and has been 

 a very important and productive adjunct of fishing 

 ever since. Divers dressed in suits can explore much 

 greater depths than most of those that work without 

 suits, and so their use vastly extends the available 

 sponging grounds. The use of diving-suits in the 

 pearl fisheries has already been described; the 

 suits used in sponge fishing and the methods em- 

 ployed are similar. 



The hazards of machine diving are not caused by 

 failures of the pump or life-line, or by the presence 

 of sharks, but because of the deleterious physiologi- 

 cal results of the changes of air pressure on the 

 body. Sooner or later the divers get the bends, or 

 caisson disease, which often leads to paralysis. 



Harpooning, or hooking, is a method of taking 

 sponges commonly practised in shallow water. The 



