Cliff Diving
Cliff Diving, The Pearl Of The Gulf
Red Bull Cliff diving takes Dubai back to its pearling roots
Pearl Collection
© Alamy
With the Red Bull Cliff Diving world series final coming to the UAE, the country is again celebrating its diving roots - for a thousand years, the main trade here was pearl diving.
Pearl divers would work a long sunrise to sunset shift (12-14 hours), free diving up to 40m and holding a 5kg stone to take them down to the oyster beds, according to the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding.
They would gather a dozen shells in each dive, which would last from 90 seconds to three minutes. And they would have to dive up to 30 to 50 times a day to make their living, as only one in 10 oysters would contain a pearl.
Pearl Diving
© Alamy
Four-month pearling trips
In comparison, the Red Bull cliff divers will make up to four dives from a height of 27m (20m for the women) off Pier 7 in Dubai Marina. In three seconds, they will reach speeds of up to 85kph before going underwater.
At the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of sailors - up to two-thirds of Dubai's total population - would set sail from Dubai Creek every May on a four-month voyage to trawl the Gulf seas for pearls.
The revenue it brought to the country was around one million rupees. As the jewels were sold in India, this was the currency of pearls.
Teen divers
Boys would begin working in the pearl trade from the age of nine, when they would be enlisted to pry open the oyster shells. They would begin diving from the tender age of 12, retiring at around 50.
Of course, the Red Bull divers are much older than those boys! Generally, both men and women are in their late twenties to mid-thirties - although the legendary Orlando Duque is the oldest competitor at 42.
For equipment, pearl divers would have just a turtle-shell nose clip, wax in their ears, leather finger protectors, a rope basket, their stone weight and a rope to bring them back to the surface – and a cotton suit to protect them from jellyfish, if they were lucky.
Deep Dive
© Alamy
Cultured pearls
Similarly, there is no equipment or special clothing for a cliff diver - it's just them, in their bathing suits, leaping off heights the equivalent of an eight-storey building.
The captain would take charge of selling the pearls, and the best could fetch 1,500 rupees, but the divers might only earn 100 rupees in a season.
But by the 1920s, with the advent of Japanese cultured pearls, and then the economic depression a decade later, the industry began to die out, replaced by the hunt for ‘black gold’ - oil. The last great pearl expedition set sail in 1949.
Watch the Red Bull Cliff Diving in Dubai Marina on Friday 28 October from 8pm.
Where can you still see pearls in the UAE?
- Emirates NBD's head office on the Creek is home to the largest pearl collection in the country, donated by Sultan Bin Al Owais, one of the bank's founders, who came from a pearl diving family. Visits to the pearl museum must be booked in advance.
- The diving village at the Dubai Heritage Village in Shindagha, Bur Dubai, has models of pearling dhows and does demonstrations of pearl diving practices.
- Take a pearl diving expedition yourself with the Jumeirah Hotel Dive Centre. Setting sail in a traditional dhow, you will dive three to five metres in search of oysters - and keep any pearls you find.
- Cultured pearls are made by RAK Pearls in Ras al Khaimah, with the oyster farms' nets visible from the harbour.
- You can also try free diving for yourself with Freediving UAE
