Treasure of an oyster: Patrick Flückiger - A life aquatic | Part IV

Water has always been Patrick’s element, he was 14 years old when he took his first scuba diving lesson but remembers as a younger boy being transfixed watching fish in the Mediterranean through his goggles. Underwater worlds and their inhabitants have continued to captivate him ever since.

Patrick grew up in France, near the Jura Mountains, on the Swiss border, and at the age of 10 the family moved to the outskirts of Geneva. Whilst his contemporaries’ study took place solely in the classroom, Patrick combined conventional school lessons with classes in diving whilst the summer vacations provided the time to travel, and in Madagascar at the age of 18 he qualified as a divemaster – certification is a key qualification and the pre-requisite for further training as a dive instructor in a recreational capacity.

Patrick stresses that he was always keen to learn, diving was not just a convenient escape, but he favoured doing it in a different way and ‘in a swimming costume’. As a scuba diving instructor Patrick spent his early 20s working in a number of locations: South East Asia, the Caribbean, Zanzibar, where he sourced new sites for a diving centre, and Thailand. He also gave dive classes on Lake Geneva during the summer months, he notes that the Lake is challenging, it is very deep and cold, but those able to endure the difficult conditions invariably go on to become great divers. By contrast, Patrick says the Caribbean Sea on a quiet day feels like a bathtub!

A couple of years into his work as a dive instructor, the familiarity of giving the same lessons was becoming rather too routine so Patrick turned his energies towards the establishment of a diving school aboard a sailing boat. In order to determine the best vessel for the purpose he undertook a round the world sea voyage, which took him to French Polynesia where he free dived on pearl farms. From here he sailed to New Zealand on a three mast, eighteen-sail ship, an identical replica of the tall ship which took James Cook on the same voyage in the late 18th century. Patrick travelled from Tahiti, via the Cook Islands, to Gisborne on New Zealand’s North Island, and then moved on to Australia where he worked as a crew member on a boat making its way up the Great Barrier Reef.

It was at this time that various elements in Patrick’s life began to align – on the Barrier Reef Patrick met a retired Frenchman who had bought a sailing boat on which he was circumnavigating the world whilst along the way he sold the cultured pearls he bought in French Polynesia in Sydney to cover his fuel costs on that segment. A few months prior to this meeting Patrick was having second thoughts about owning a boat and the commitment involved, he also recognised that he would rather be a diver, than a sailor, but above all he still loved the water. And, so it seemed possible that trading in pearls could offer him a good, balanced work-life solution.

The next step for Patrick was to find out how and where to buy and sell pearls. He worked as a diver on a cultured pearl farm on the Cook Islands but soon switched to natural pearls, and bought his first example in French Polynesia, with his first dive for natural pearls taking place in Bahrain. Bahrain is one of the world’s most important natural pearl locations, in the late 1920s the natural pearl business, at the time the country’s main industry, supported around fifty thousand divers, whereas today there are approximately 1,500 active divers.

Patrick free dives for natural pearls in the traditional way, but with some concessions – he wears a wet suit, fins, a mask and a weight belt, a basket hangs around his neck to hold the oysters. In the Persian Gulf oysters are typically located on the sea bed at a depth of 5 to 20 metres, and on a recent dive off Doha Patrick was diving to around 12 metres. In total he would typically spend less than 2 minutes in the dive down, oyster sourcing, and the ascent back to the surface. Clearly scuba diving would result in the extraction of more oysters, but Patrick prefers the long-established freediving method, which also comes with the much-reduced risk of ‘the bends’.

Civilisations have always practised freediving, for gathering food, sponges, pearls and coral, to recover sunken items and to assist in naval campaigns. Both Plato and Homer write of sponges used for bathing and the island of Kalymnos in the south eastern Aegean Sea was one of the main dive centres for these. The seabed of the Mediterranean is littered with the cargo of ships wrecked during storms and divers were employed to salvage items which could viably be returned to the surface.

The exploits of Hydna of Scione (active c. 480 BC), a famous female free diver, were described by Pausanias (c. 110-180AD), the Greek traveller and geographer, in his work, Description of Greece. Prior to the battle of Salamis, a key naval battle fought by the Greeks against the Persians, Hydna and her father, Scyllias, volunteered to assist the Greek forces by sabotaging the Persian fleet moored off the coast of Mount Pelion waiting for a storm to pass. Hydna was renowned as a skilled swimmer, as a child she was trained by her father, she could swim long distances and make deep dives. Hydna and Scyllias swam out 10 miles in rough seas and stormy weather to the Persian fleet, and once amongst the ships they cut the moorings and dragged away the ships’ anchors causing the vessels to collide and sink. The heroic act gave the Greek navy more time to prepare for battle and played a part in their ultimate and important victory over the Persians.

However, pearl diving can now only be a hobby for Patrick, as it is for many divers living in and around Bahrain and Qatar, as his main focus is Swiss Pearls where he also offers precious stones, natural pearls and antique jewellery; natural pearls account for around 20-30% of his business. He receives regular commissions for natural pearl jewellery and creates bespoke necklaces for individual clients. Patrick is particularly interested in sourcing second hand gemstones, and takes the view that over the centuries we have extracted much of the earth’s natural treasures, and should continue to wear and cherish these stones regardless of their age. When he does buy directly from a mine he visits it in advance, he is curious to see its operations, how it treats employees and works to lessen the impact on the local environment.

Understanding Jewellery was interested to know if Patrick has a favourite item of pearl jewellery? He recalls an Art Deco platinum, diamond and enamel pendant from 1929, created by Cartier. It features an unusually large, uniform abalone pearl, and nine other natural saltwater and freshwater pearls of various sizes from sites around the world, these are positioned almost randomly across the pendant in a natural yet ultimately extravagant design.

And, then, a final question, what is next for Patrick?

He is training to become an outdoor guide, and to ultimately share this knowledge with others, and Switzerland, of course, is the perfect classroom.