Moving into the Water

This chapter focuses on swimming and diving as methods for close human contact with marine environments. While most early modern white people were either unable to swim or could only reluctantly swim, many other areas of the world were continuing a longer history of skilled swimming, diving, and surfing. Of particular note was the recognition by European and American slavers of the greater swimming and diving skill of Africans, for example using enslaved Africans as divers for pearls and salvage. These differences in ability to move the human body directly through the water created a hierarchy of access to the underwater world. This chapter also considers the environmental specificities of different areas of the ocean around the world. Regional environmental variation supported specialized underwater harvesting such as by Japanese and Korean women divers, and also more recreational and sometimes spiritual practices such as the independent cultures of surfing in Polynesia and Atlantic Africa.