You want to know something about divers? You’ve come to the right man. I’m Taiwan’s most senior active diver. See that? [Points at several bronze diving helmets and a pair of diving shoes.] I first used one of those "bronze heads" when I was sixteen. That old equipment is really heavy and hard to use. It takes about thirty minutes just to get it on. When the diver goes under, air is pumped into the suit from ship or shore by manpower. The deeper the diver goes, the higher the pressure, and the more power it takes to operate the pump. But if too much air is pumped into the helmet or the diving suit, the diver floats, water gets into the helmet, and the diver drowns. To force out extra air, you have to shake your head around and knock on the helmet from time to time. [Demonstrates by shaking his head from side to side.] I gave all my old gear away when we got new equipment. I didn't expect this old stuff to become so valuable.
My father worked as a diver in Penghu [a small island group west of Taiwan]. I used to follow him to work and started learning to dive when I was six. After I finished primary school, I became a professional diver and worked with him. In the 1950s, we moved to Taiwan and my father, big brother, and I continued to dive. My two younger brothers work in the shipbreaking industry. My whole family works in water-related professions. [Lights a cigarette.] But it's only my generation. My two kids, a daughter 23, and a son 21, have no interest in becoming divers. My wife can't even swim. I encourage my kids to try recreational diving, but I don't want to see them become professional divers. It's not a good working environment.
My father retired fifteen years ago. The things I learned from him have helped me to build a good reputation as a professional diver and underwater engineer. There are all kinds of underwater jobs: pipeline work, ship repairing and refloating, dock work, rescue, and many others. A diver who's good at one isn't necessarily good at another. I'm good at refloating sunken ships, which is the hardest. If a wreck doesn't affect sea lanes, fishing grounds, or cause pollution, we leave it where it is. Otherwise, we have to refloat it and pull it away. In fact, most of the refloated wrecks around Taiwan were refloated by me. The biggest ship I've ever brought up was 50,000 tons. It had blown up and sunk during breaking. I cut it in half and refloated it.
Underwater engineering companies don't have their own divers. Regulations say that you need at least four licensed divers to open such a company. But it's easy to borrow four licenses. Companies recruit divers when there's a job to do. Anyway, the basic method for refloating ships is like this: seal the holds, fix the leaks, pump out water, pump in air, and the ship can float. I spent a lot of time at shipbreaking yards, so I'm familiar with ship structures and layouts. If you want to be a doctor, you have to know the human body very well.
When you want to refloat a ship, you have to go down and check it out first. You've gotta see how big the hole is, where the leaks would be, and get a general feel for the situation. Then you go home to plan the job. The key is to keep the ship balanced. You've got to figure out which holds to seal, which parts to dismantle, and which holds to pump first. If you don't do it right, the boat loses its balance and can capsize and sink again. I've seen ships refloated a dozen times, only to sink again each time. Even if your plan is good, there are always things that you can't control. A big wave can take you back to square one.
Before a sunken ship can be refloated, we have to cut away small parts and drag them up first. We used to use explosives. It took careful calculation to place the right amount of explosives in just the right spot. But now there's all kinds of underwater cutting equipment. When a diver enters a wreck, the most important thing he has to do is to pull a safety line behind him so he can find the way back out. It's dark down there, and ships are often so big that divers can easily get lost without the line.
Passenger ships are the toughest. They can have more than a thousand cabins filled with wooden decorations, glass, and special materials to keep out heat. It'd be easier if we could just blow it up. But explosives are strictly controlled now. Anyway, after months of planning and hard work, when you see a wreck coming to the surface, you feel a sense of achievement. [Lights another cigarette.]
Sunken treasure? You've seen too many movies. But the Japanese shipped tons of gold out of Taiwan when they left, and some of those ships sank. I saw photos of treasure hunters' boats from Hong Kong working in the Taiwan Straits that came up with gold in their nets. But there's no way to trace the exact location of those wrecks now. You must have heard of the one that sank near Tamsui. A lot of people have heard of it. Many of them, including foreign companies, have spent years and millions of dollars trying to find it, but they've all come up empty handed. A lot of countries usually keep detailed shipping records, so they know the ship's cargo and its exact location if it sinks. But until about thirty years ago, we didn't keep such records. Even if we knew the possible location, it could be too deep. I have a diver friend in Kaohsiung who accidentally found a sunken ship. I think there were some antiques on board. He didn't report the find to the government until a couple of years ago, after he'd taken most of the valuables away.
Recreational diving has been getting more popular in recent years. But it's very different from what we do. Recreational divers go to places where the water is clear and the view is beautiful. But where we work is usually very muddy. We can't see clearly, so we have to trust in our experience and instincts. It's difficult to put into words. Frankly, when you've been in the business as long as I have, you don't care about the view. When we go down, we're there to get the job done.
Compared to workers in other professions, divers are paid very well. The average daily pay is NT$4,000 to $5,000 [US$150 to $185]. You can make even more if you get a chance to work abroad. The Japanese pay NT$15,000 [US$555] for a two-hour dive. They don't have enough divers, so they recruit from Taiwan. It's the same here. Some companies now hire mainland [Chinese] divers and pay them NT$1,000 to $2,000 [US$37 to $74] per day. But even though there's not a lot of competition in the market, we don't always get work. Sea conditions in northern Taiwan only allow us to work there for six months out of the year, from April to October. Southern Taiwan is better. But it depends a lot on weather conditions. Sometimes conditions deteriorate as soon as we arrive at the shore, so we have to scrap the day's work. We don't work regular hours either. It depends on a lot of factors like the weather and tides, and the depth and nature of the job. But if you're on a rescue mission or repairing oil-tank leaks, you can't wait till the sea is calm.
Now you have to be licensed to work as a professional diver. There are three classes of licenses. Class C is for normal air [oxygen-nitrogen mixture] dives within a depth of forty meters. Class B is for oxygen-helium mixture dives that allow the diver to reach one hundred meters. Class A is for divers who live in underwater stations for extended periods. In Taiwan, a class C license is more than enough because there are no deep-water jobs. The Employment and Vocational Training Administration offers classes to train divers. There are also some who learn to dive during their military service. But not everyone who has a license wants to be a professional diver. There are only about four hundred and fifty to five hundred professional divers in Taiwan. Most people don't like dangerous jobs.
There isn't a professional divers union. People say I'm the most qualified person to organize one. But I'm not interested. In Japan, the union is very powerful. If you break the regulations or have a poor-conduct record, the union will temporarily suspend your license, and no one will hire you during that time. But it's different in Taiwan. There's no way of regulating divers here because standards are so low. They're their own bosses. If they don't like you, they go somewhere else. Many of them drink all night, go to the job the next day and sleep. If you try to wake them up, they call you a slave driver and quit. Besides, it's dangerous to have them working down there when they're hungover, so what do you do? It's difficult. It's been like this for thirty or forty years. I don't think I can do anything about it. I'm not [President] Lee Teng-hui. No one will listen to me.
Even though it's a dangerous job, professional divers have very few accidents. There were only three incidents last year. One involved a senior diver who drank too much before diving. Most people in this profession drink, you know. But if you are diving tomorrow, you'd better control yourself. You have to be at your best. But more lobster fishermen than divers are killed on the job. Lobster fishermen go deeper and deeper without proper equipment and never depressurize when they come up. By the time they start to feel uncomfortable, it's usually too late. Theoretically, the deeper you dive, the more dangerous it is. My record is forty-five meters. He [points to Tseng Hsien-shun sitting beside him] once went down to seventy-five meters. But just because you can make that depth once, doesn't mean you can do it again. It depends on your physical condition, sea conditions, and a lot of other things.
Divers are affected most by improper depressurization when they come up. They get the bends. It's a chronic problem. [He takes out a diver instruction manual and points to illustrations.] The human body is like a bottle of coke. When you surface, it's like taking off the cap. Lots of little bubbles form inside your body because of the change in pressure. When you've worked at a certain depth for a period of time, you have to come up slowly and breathe out those tiny bubbles. If you don't, they bunch up around your joints. You might not feel uncomfortable the first few times, but the pressure pocket can suddenly burst and cause permanent damage. Also, if you come up too quickly, your lungs can pop and force air into your heart, brain, and everywhere. Before you go down, depending on how long and how deep you're going, you have to figure out the time you need to surface. Regulations say that professional divers must take a physical once a year, but no one took it seriously before-some still don't. The thing is, even if you don't take the exam or don't pass it, you can still keep your license and work. [Lights up another cigarette.]
But most of us take it more seriously now. It can't hurt to know the condition of my heart and blood pressure, especially at my age. I'm still in good shape, but I think I'll retire in a few years. I don't have any plans yet. But I guess I'll be doing what I've been doing in my off hours: walk around the neighborhood, visit friends, chat, and drink a little. I can probably give lessons to amateur divers. I could even do some recreational diving. But there isn't anything to see in Taiwan. It's better to do recreational diving somewhere else. I've noticed big changes in the ocean environment. When I was young, there was lots of sea life all along the coastline. About fifteen years ago when I was doing a project in Penghu, we didn't have to buy fish. One or two divers could catch more fish in an hour than a dozen people could carry. But there aren't any fish here anymore. In 1987, when I was diving in Matsu, there were still lots of fish. But later when we were doing a job laying fiber-optic cable, the fish were all gone. We were told that the fish were all blown out by mainland fishermen. [Mainland Chinese fishermen often use dynamite for fishing.] The situation in Kinmen [Quemoy] is the same, and it's worse in Taiwan. We always make fun of people who go fishing. What the hell do they expect to catch? We're down there and there are no fish. They're just wasting time.