Diving patterns of ama divers of Hegura Island, Japan

Daily diving patterns, especially depth-time profiles, were continuously recorded during the entire work shift in four cachido and four funado divers of Hegura Island, Japan. All Hegura divers (cachido and funado alike) were female and habitually wore wet suits. Cachidos dive free and unassisted from a boat or float, whereas funado divers are assisted by weighted descent and during the ascent by being pulled by a partner into a boat on the water surface. Both funado and cachido divers spent 250-280 min/day on the sea at their diving locations; the actual diving time was 100-120 min. The divers made 90-120 dives/day to a depth of 13-22 m, each dive lasting approximately 60 s, considerably longer and deeper than those observed and recorded previously in ama divers in the Chiba and Miura regions. These dive profiles are similar to those reported by Paulev in which he observed apparent signs of decompression sickness when the subject dived to a depth of 15-20 m 100 times in 5 h. The average bottom time for each dive of Hegura funados was 23.6 s which is approximately 10 s longer than that of Korean female ama. The rate of ascent in the funado divers was 1.5 m/s, which is nearly twice that of the cachido divers (0.8 m/s). The dive frequency of Hegura funados (109 dives/day) was greater than the Chiba male funados (23 dives/day). Accordingly, cumulative bottom time of Hegura funado was 48 min/day, whereas that of Chiba funado was 17 min/day.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)