A Living Based on Breath-Hold Diving in the Bajau Laut
Authors: Erika Schagatay, Erik Abrahamsson
DOI / Source: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A681694&dswid=2178
Date: 01 January 2014
Reading level: Beginner
Why This Matters for Freedivers
This paper shows what “real-world freediving” looks like when it’s not a sport, but a job—hours in the water, hundreds of dives, day after day. It’s a powerful reminder that humans can build extreme efficiency through repetition, calm, and technique—and it also highlights how environment (like reduced fish stocks) can push divers to work harder and potentially take more risks.
Synopsis
Most freedivers train for a personal best. The Bajau Laut—often called “sea nomads” in Southeast Asia—freedive because it’s how they eat. This paper follows their daily life and diving work to answer a big question: do modern humans actually have the physiological potential to make a living from breath-hold diving, the way some traditional communities do?
The authors combined social-anthropological fieldwork with real dive data. Over multiple research trips between 2010 and 2013 (about nine months total), they lived among Bajau Laut communities in the Philippines and Indonesia and documented their routines, tools, and catches. For the physiology side, they logged working-day dives from ten male spearfishers using time–depth recorders, capturing roughly a thousand dives.
Two typical “work styles” showed up. One group hunted shallow reefs (around 5–7 m) for 2–9 hours and spent about 60% of that time underwater. Another group averaged deeper work (around 10 m, with dives down to 25 m) for 3–9 hours and still spent about 50% of their time submerged. Their dives were not “max attempts”—they were repeated, efficient drops designed to maximise seabed time: searching, aiming, retrieving fish, then quick surface pauses to reload and recover. A typical shift could still produce a serious catch (reported as roughly 1–8 kg per diver), including reef fish and things like octopus.
The paper also shows how this becomes a whole-life skill. Children learn to swim and dive very early. Women and children commonly gather clams, sea cucumbers, crustaceans, and seaweed in shallow water, while men do most of the spearfishing and deeper diving. Equipment is minimal: small wooden goggles, simple spear-guns, usually no wetsuits, and often no fins (though some divers used improvised fins).
A striking bonus detail is that the Bajau can also go much deeper when the context changes. The authors describe a deep-diving competition where Bajau divers used a weighted descent and were pulled back up—traditional in some groups. Many reached 33 m or more, and the deepest dive reported was 79 m, with a longest underwater time just over 3 minutes.
Finally, the paper adds a modern pressure point: in some areas, fish stocks have diminished. The lifestyle and equipment haven’t changed much, but people may need to spend more hours in the water to get the same food. The authors’ overall conclusion is clear: humans can, physiologically, support a subsistence lifestyle based on repeated breath-hold diving—especially in warm waters—using skill, efficiency, and a powerful diving response developed through lifelong practice.
Abstract
Sea nomads or “sea people,” including the Bajau Laut in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, are skilled divers and many make a living from freediving. Men do most spearfishing, while women also dive, predominantly for gathering seafood. They start diving at an early age and spend much of their lives on and in the sea. The objective of this study was to document their diving and way of life to evaluate whether modern humans have the physiological potential to make a living from breath-hold diving for fishing and gathering. The Bajau Laut were visited for a total of nine months across three periods between 2010 and 2013 in a combined physiological and social-anthropological study. Diving physiology observations focused on ten male divers whose working-day spearfishing dives were logged with time–depth recorders. One group performed shallow spearfishing (about 5–7 m) with an underwater working time of about 60% while diving 2–9 hours; another group averaged deeper diving (about 10 m) with an underwater working time of about 50% while diving 3–9 hours daily. During this time, substantial catches were obtained, and women gathered a variety of seabed foods. Life among the Bajau Laut was broadly similar to that observed decades earlier, although diminishing fish stocks in some areas appear to require more time in the water to obtain comparable catches. The study concludes that modern humans possess the physiological qualities necessary to make a living from hunting and gathering via breath-hold diving.