FISHING in marine waters—seas and oceans—demands traversing large expanses of open waters, which is possible only if fishers spend a considerable length of time on fishing vessels using a range of tools. Today, they include a variety of nets, pulleys, winches, ropes and electrical, digital and mechanical instruments. Fishers work with these tools to wrestle with the affordances and constraints of a realm that constantly tests the endurance of humans as a terrestrial species. Many bodily reactions remind fishers of the physical limitations they face out at sea on a constantly bobbing vessel. They have to combat seasickness; long hours of exposure to a combination of heat, cold, wind, salt spray and blinding light from the reflection of the sun on water; and the less-understood experience of mal de debarquement, or “sea legs”, the feeling of unsteadiness upon return to land. Great fiction such as The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway or The Pearl by John Steinbeck are excellent portrayals of the cognitive, emotional, and social trials of a life spent in fisheries, the former outlining a struggle on board and the latter tracing the (mis)fortunes of a pearl diver both underwater and on shore.

The human body is brought one step closer to an amphibious state in fishing practices such as breath-hold diving. Fishing by diving has been practised for thousands of years and is still prevalent in many parts of the world. Diving itself has undergone many changes to enable humans to spend long hours underwater and has incorporated equipment such as masks, fins, diving apparel, and scuba-related devices such as regulators, rebreathers, compressed air tanks or access to an above-water air source such as those used in diving bells and “hookah diving” (where long hoses connect a mouthpiece to a compressor on board).

Fishing by simple breath-hold diving, on the other hand, retains, in this contest, the principle limitation of humans as air-breathing terrestrial species and is one of the closest ways in which the human body can expose itself intimately to the vagaries of becoming amphibious.

Freediving in its longer version of breath-hold diving is popular across the world today as an elite sport in which highly fit individuals compete with themselves and/or others to achieve greater limits of depth, technique and experience. Its elite status is partly derived from its practitioners and their purpose—often relatively well-off individuals who dive as a form of competitive recreation even though it can result in economic benefits (through awards, celebrity and exclusivity-related social capital). Freediving also attracts many individuals to use diving as a form of self-awareness and improvement since it forces divers to confront and attempt to transcend their physical and mental limitations.

Contrasted with such diving, the breath-hold diving practised by hundreds of fishers across the world is not quite as glamorous and is akin to an image of labour rather than that of leisure. But is labour all that one can discern from such fishing practices? Does the social status of these divers and their livelihood compulsions obscure their skills, experience and innovation?

This photo essay is a vignette of the economic, cultural and cognitive world of breath-hold divers from the Palk Bay in India; amphibious lives often hidden and forgotten in the excitement and privilege emblematic of recreational diving or the growing techno-capital dependency of comparatively disembodied fishing.

The Palk Bay, abutting south coastal Tamil Nadu in India, is a shallow region where the depth exceeds 15 metres only in some areas. This geomorphologic feature of shallow water, along with oceanographic qualities such as seabed features, salinity, sedimentation, water currents and temperature, makes for a rich marine biodiversity dominated by seagrass ecosystems. While breath-hold diving for pearl oysters (Pinctada fucata) and the sacred chank (Turbinella pyrum) has been practised for hundreds of years along the coasts of present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu, today this practice is restricted to the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay in Tamil Nadu.

In the Palk Bay, all the action is largely in the coastal belt of Ramanathapuram district, where fishing by diving is practised mainly by men belonging to the Kadaiyar and Paravar castes. It is most actively seen today in the villages of Karangad, Devipattinam and Olaikuda, where fishers dive to collect molluscs such as the sacred chank and ornamental molluscs, but also to spear fish, lay traps and opportunistically collect other marine creatures. The active and open fisheries for sea cucumbers was curtailed by a ban imposed in 2002 by the then Union Ministry of Environment and Forests on the basis of concerns about their depletion. This ban continues to be opposed by a number of fishers who are unconvinced by the depletion argument. They took out a protest in early 2017 at Devipattinam, arguing that the ban was unjustified and that it had driven the business underground.

Few scientific studies have been done on the social world of fishers along this coast and fewer still have focussed on the relations between the people of this coastline and the marine creatures and environments they engage with. Travelling along this coastline in 2015 and 2016 while researching for a documentary film on the diversity of fishing practices among small-scale fishers in the Palk Bay, my colleagues and I had the opportunity to encounter the world of divers in this region. Focussing on the historical village of Karangad, we followed the Pattangatti Kadaiyar families who continue to dive seasonally for the sacred chank. We filmed on a tight schedule and a tighter budget, but witnessed the ingenuity of small-scale fishers. The documentary, Fishing Palk Bay, is available on YouTube. Some historical accounts trace the historicity of the parish of Karangad to the early 1600s, but these church-related records provide few accounts of its members’ amphibious world. For this, one must not just be in Karangad and follow its village life, but also find the means to follow the divers in the water.

Divers from these villages occupy two distinct realms at all times, one terrestrial and the other marine. This amphibiousness is visible not just from the embodied effects of being underwater such as in dietary practices or medicinal treatments derived from terrestrial plants and their use in combating barotrauma, but also in cultural artefacts that ease being underwater. The artefacts crafted and redesigned to suit breath-hold diving in this region reflect not just the demands of this shallow sea’s influence but also the material transactions and economic opportunities and limitations of the world on shore. The images presented with this article provide a peek into a complex and less-understood life.

Aarthi Sridhar is Trustee and Programme Head, Dakshin Foundation and doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam. Umeed Mistry is an award-winning photographer and Staff Instructor of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors.

^{(To see a fuller collection of photo essays on marine life in the Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar, write to aarthi77@gmail.com for a copy of the book Knowing the Palk Bay produced with support from the Coastal and Marine Protected Areas (CMPA) project of GiZ India.)}