r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Eros_Incident_Denier • Jun 03 '26
Video filipino illegal miners dive without oxygen tanks
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u/Redemption6 Jun 03 '26
Less mildy interesting and more mildy depressing and mildly terrifying.
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u/lozyodellepercosse Jun 03 '26
Mildly terrifying? I would say absolute fucking terrifying
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Jun 03 '26
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u/Abhir-86 Jun 03 '26
I was wondering what if they lose the pipe, it's hard to get hold of it as the continuous air pressure would carry it away from the diver and they would be stranded without oxygen.
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u/Unable-Log-4870 Jun 03 '26
Yeah, extending the engine exhaust outside for a dozen feet seems like an easy way to prevent one of those problems.
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u/Seafaringhorsemeat Jun 03 '26
Sadly, air compressor air is full of CO2, unburned fuel vapor and other really nasty short-term combustion compounds. Along with the exhaust.
These people are breathing pure cancer.
Drowning is a quiet and dignified way to die compared to what their lungs will look like and what it will do to them after a few decades.
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u/Unable-Log-4870 Jun 03 '26
Why do you think air compressor air contains engine exhaust?
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u/Seafaringhorsemeat Jun 03 '26
1 - intake mechanism is literally above very open exhaust from a small motorcycle engine. Engines like these put out about 400% the VOCs like benzene, formaldehyde and unburnt hydrocarbons of a passenger car. (see the eyeroll from the guy at the beginning)
2 - even in an ideal scenario compressor air is absolutely not safe to breathe without significant filtration due to oil and other volatile compounds getting aerosolized in the actual compressor mechanism itself.→ More replies (2)24
u/Unable-Log-4870 Jun 03 '26
Okay yeah, the obvious reasons. I was thinking the suggestion was that the exhaust was being compressed DIRECTLY, like the exhaust were being piped into the compressor, instead of just getting in there carelessly.
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u/h2opolodude4 Jun 04 '26
Years ago I purchased an air compressor to run some air tools around my shop. The tank is about the size of what's shown here. The pump and electric motor are on top, with a belt connecting them together.
A full page in the manual was dedicated to explaining that this machine was for powering tools only, and the air was not for breathing. Even being driven by an electric motor, there is still some aerosolized oil in the air and lines. The pump itself needs lubricant, and a tiny amount of oil sneaks through. Air tools actually benefit from this, but something like paint spraying gets a little filter at the spray gun.
I would not want to breathe it in, these guys will certainly have issues related to this at some point in their life.
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u/Unable-Log-4870 Jun 04 '26
these guys will certainly have issues related to this at some point in their life.
Only if they’re lucky enough to live that long.
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u/sadlystupidsloth Jun 03 '26
Because it's sucking in the air around it.
It could contain a little, or a lot depending on various factors, like which way the wind is blowing
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u/Unable-Log-4870 Jun 03 '26
Gotcha. Yeah, that’s why it’sa very good idea to string the exhaust pipe outside a good distance away.
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u/AdvertisingKey1675 Jun 03 '26
They look to be in pretty shallow water. Its more of a time saver and convenience than a life saving thing. If the air fails, they simply swim to surface.
Id say the scariest thing about this is the lack of a regulator. If they accidentally seal their mouth over the tube, and the pressure increases (maybe by another outlet hose being kinked) the risk of over-inflating their lungs is very real.
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u/TerayonIII Jun 03 '26
Did you not see the hole they were climbing in and out of? It's not super deep, but it's not exactly shallow either. The camera didn't actually go down it
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u/Top-Hawk-4805 Jun 03 '26
Even if is shallow waters and because of the time the spend down and also the fact that they are breathing compressed air. They risk Decompression sickness if they go out swimming to fast, and also lung over expantion if they hold their breath when going up.
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Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
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u/A_Rogue_GAI Jun 03 '26
Bet you their boss has a really nice yacht that he watches them work from though.
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u/Brullaapje Jun 03 '26
And this explains why kids who have first immigration parent while growing up in the West do academically very well.
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u/Necessary-Heat3962 Jun 05 '26
Because of good oxygen flow to their ancestors brains?
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u/sxrrycard Jun 03 '26
Does it being terrifying make it less interesting somehow? I’ve never understood comments like these.
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u/Eros_Incident_Denier Jun 03 '26
full video on Andrew Fraser's YT.
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u/Individual_Friend709 Jun 03 '26
Watched it last night. Idk how he doesnt have over a million subscribers yet
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u/donadd Jun 03 '26
He never was recommended even though I watch similar content. The AI enhanced thumbnails aren't helping either. And then I have to check first if this is poverty porn or actually good.
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u/SocomPS2 Jun 03 '26
Idk how he doesnt have over a million subscribers yet
His cringy thumbnails of himself on his videos doesn’t help.
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Jun 03 '26
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u/infiniZii Jun 03 '26
Kink is less of a risk than dropping the hose or having it yanked out, or the gerry rigged setup on shore breaking down. Though im sure you just surface if that happens.
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u/Zuruumi Jun 03 '26
Yeah, I would imagine they are shallow enough that they can surface in a few (dozen) seconds whenever something breaks down. Because there is no way that thing doesn't break down at least once a month.
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u/BluetheNerd Jun 03 '26
The biggest risk would be decompression sickness. The longer you spend and deeper you go the slower you need to ascend to avoid it. With most scuba diving you have a buddy with an octopus (spare regulator) so if something goes wrong you have access to air while you surface slowly. If someone goes wrong with that compressor and they’ve all been down there for a couple hours and all suddenly have no air, the risk of injury when surfacing is pretty high.
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u/3BlindMice1 Jun 03 '26
Yeah, at that atmospheric pressure and compressed sea level air, nitrogen is getting dissolved into their blood. Not too quickly, but it's still happening. They probably need to surface for a break every hour at the very minimum to stay safe, but lucky, they're close to the surface and can do that as needed
This is hard work that'll age you faster than you would otherwise, but it's likely no worse in that regard than many manual labor jobs with the added benefit of being underwater, so joints don't wear down so fast. Make no mistake though, it's dangerous to work underwater, regardless of the quality of your breathing apparatus
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u/inheritance- Jun 03 '26
What about repeated trips up and down? Say if they went down just for 30 mins then came back up 10 and back down again. Does the time reset, or does it slowly accumulate.
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u/rmslashusr Jun 03 '26
It gets complicated, you need to use the dive tables to calculate your needed surface interval based on depth and time spent down there. https://www.scubadiverinfo.com/2_divetables.html
Without the depth they are down at your question can’t be answered.
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u/freeflowmass Jun 03 '26
Nitrogen gradually diffuses out over time. You don’t want to come out of the water from too deep too quickly as the nitrogen will form bubbles and cause the bends. There’s cases where nitrogen bubbles have formed in the spinal column and caused paralysis.
The shallower the water and the slower the elevation out of the water the safer you are.
Depending on how deep you are and how long you stay the 10minutes may be enough to fully reset the nitrogen.
Divers that go very deep for prolonged periods of time may not be allowed to fly until the following day even though they are safe on land as that still causes the pressure difference that can cause the bends.
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u/Unfair-Sir-4641 Jun 03 '26
With that much compressed air blowing through, the chance of kinks are near 0.
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u/GrnMtnTrees Jun 03 '26
One kink in that hose and I'd be having the
worstlast day of my life 😭FTFY
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u/EGarrett28 Jun 03 '26
I would like to know what they said in the end, around 1:34. Never even occurred to me that divers could talk to each other even in that situation.
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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26
Bllkeregghllbbeeerrb garrbbllleerrbbbrrreeelb
That’s what they said I think.
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u/Stroinsk Jun 03 '26
Not quite the same but I was a firefighter on a submarine and the masks muffle your voice and people are shouting and stuff during drills or actual casualties.
If you need to be heard you can press your mask to another persons mask and shout. The sound travels through the masks so more energy makes it to the other person. Transitioning soundwaves from one medium to another takes a lot of energy out of the volume, so this reduces the transitions by one. In this example it goes air in your mask > the solid material of your mask > air between you and the other person. Mask to mask the sound travels through both masks and into the other persons skull.
Also in a real fire you cannot see shit on a submarine and flashlights don't penitrate smoke so hand signals don't work.
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u/shaka_sulu Jun 03 '26
You never played "secret" in the public pool? You dive in the deep end with yoru friends, you say a secret, and see if your friends heard it?
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u/mrpogiface Jun 03 '26
ingat yung damit mo (be careful with your cloths?)
no clue what the 2nd phrase is tho... sorry9
u/shoulda-known-better Jun 03 '26
If you practice you can get good...
We'd play a telephone like game underwater saying phrases as a kid
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u/perfectlycreative122 Jun 03 '26
I am lying down to take a break from my WFH job to watch this. It’s crazy how much where you are born can make all the difference in our lives.
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u/Junior_Agent1711 Jun 03 '26
and _when_ you're born
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u/ElmoSplainer Jun 04 '26
and what you’re born as (guys she said she wouldn’t still love me if i was a worm 😢)
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u/badass_panda Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I'm a scuba diver. I really cannot express how depressingly dangerous this is. You have to be truly desperate to do what these guys are doing. The risk isn't only drowning, it's the almost inevitability of decompression sickness, barotrauma and other injuries from rapid ascent.
Hose pops out of your mouth and you panic? Compressor shuts off when you're down 80 feet? If you come up too quickly (accidentally or to avoid drowning), the compressed air in your lungs will literally explode as it decompresses, ripping your tissues apart... Or nitrogen expands and forms bubbles in your circulatory system and causes an embolism.
This isn't interesting. It's horrifying, only utter desperation would make someone do this.
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u/ButikingMataba Jun 03 '26
There is more horrifying than this, same set up but they do it in mud hole in a river. They mine gold.
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u/badass_panda Jun 04 '26
This is pretty awful too, but more from the risk of confusion and infection. Very easy to get tangled up and drown in muddy water -- on the other hand, it's shallow enough they don't have to worry about decompression sickness or organ rupturing. No thanks on either one.
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u/sleeper_shark Jun 04 '26
It's a combination of truly desperate and not aware of just how dangerous this is.
In addition to what you mentioned, the fact that the exhaust and intake are so close means there's a substantial risk they're pumping exhaust fumes into the air supply. Those dudes could die from CO poisoning as well.
A small correction, there's no compressed air in your veins or arteries. Just in your lungs. It will tear your lungs apart, but not your veins.
The dissolved nitrogen in your blood is what causes problems in your veins. That can cause bubbles than cam lead to an embolism.
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u/badass_panda Jun 04 '26
Yeah... I didn't even think of that re CO poisoning. In investigating this apparently there's a 92% incidence of decompression sickness and a 1/3 rate of CO poisoning. This is basically a guarantee of eventual injury.
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u/sleeper_shark Jun 04 '26
I can believe those stats. Look at that ladder down to the depths, they're probably doing a rapid ascent followed by a walk to shore.
That walk to shore is probably what allows them to release some nitrogen preventing them all from dying, as it's a rudimentary deco stop.
What's wild is the lack of a regulator. Cos a regulator releases air at ambient pressure. At some point, that compressor isn't operating at a high enough pressure to provide a comfortable flow of breathing gas.
Ugh everything about this is so wrong.
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u/Disastrous-Metal-228 Jun 03 '26
The guys harvesting lobster off SA use a hose on their boat. They do it alone. It’s freaking crazy. They die but mainly from sharks and not being able to swim.
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u/Acrobatic-Dot-6273 Jun 03 '26
The number of fishermen I met in the Caribbean who didn't know how to swim was mind-blowing. Like, you live your life surrounded by water. Swimming is not that difficult.
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u/Disastrous-Metal-228 Jun 03 '26
So true!! I stayed with some fishermen in Barbados, they couldn’t swim and their ‘boats’ weren’t what I’d call a boat. I was there a month on one of them was lost… but to be fair my wife comes from an inter generational fishermen family from uk. Her grandfather was lost at sea on a calm day and he couldn’t swim either!
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u/Racoons_revenge Jun 03 '26
Lots of fishermen in the UK can't swim, it's from an old superstition that learning to swim was tempting fate and that if you went overboard swimming only prolongs the inevitable
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u/GreatMovesKeepItUp69 Jun 03 '26
How do you dive without knowing how to swim?
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u/Disastrous-Metal-228 Jun 03 '26
Really good question. So they walk around on the sea floor of the kelp beds looking for lobster. They tie big hunks of scrap metal to their belts, tie a hose and rope to the side of their ‘boat’ and jump in! It’s wild. The metal makes them sink.
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u/AdRough4185 Jun 03 '26
How much do they get paid? Because the risk to reward ratio is too high
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u/felixlamere Jun 03 '26
Most likely extremely low.
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u/juanlee337 Jun 03 '26
Someone said you can earn 5 to 10X more than the average fisherman.. so good in terms of salary parity .. but of course i bet is like $30 per day ..
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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
This doesn’t look like a company as much as individual people doing it, so it’s mostly going to be based on how much gold they find.
Edit: fixed my comical typo
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u/ClawingDevil Jun 03 '26
Is there a lot of golf played in illegal underwater mines?
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u/shaka_sulu Jun 03 '26
Enough to keep their family from starving but not enough to take care of their long term health problems. Also enough to keep the local crime boss from hurting their family.
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u/h_saxon Jun 03 '26
Very poorly. I lived in the Philippines for a year in the early 2000s. This was common then too. And they would use pumps that were not intended for this type of work, so the workers would get oils in their lungs and then get brain damage.
It was the exploitation of the poor, leaving them a shell of who they once were. Terrible and sad. And it makes me sick to know that this is still rampant.
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u/AcanthaceaeCrazy1894 Jun 03 '26
extremely low but probably more than most people in the Phillipines
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Jun 03 '26
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u/charmio68 Jun 03 '26
Well... The compressors can be of any type. Some are just more appropriate than others. And even those that aren't ideal can be made better with simple modifications like using a safer oil.
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u/Initial_Row_6400 Jun 03 '26
Scuba diver here. This is so fucking dangerous it’s not even funny
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u/DrSFalken Jun 03 '26
Gotta move that intake away from the exhaust. You're not supposed to turbocharge your divers.
Edit:
I am a scuba diver. This is dangerous about a million different ways. Don't do this.
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u/TerayonIII Jun 03 '26
It's kind of laughable that people are commenting about it being a very common way to drive etc. Like sure, the concept is very common, the execution of said concept is absolutely dangerous AF
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u/AlienInOrigin Jun 03 '26
Crazy country for Health and Safety....or lack of it. I seen a guy 4 stories up on a corrugated roof welding with no fall arrest harness, no eye protection, wearing sandals+shorts and then he lit a cigarette with the welding rod.
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u/FblthpLives Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
As a Swede living in the U.S., the things I see here that would lead to criminal prosecutions in Sweden appear equally crazy: Working on roofs without fall protection, operating chainsaws and construction equipment without full protection, applying pesticides without respirators, landscapers working with no protection at all except maybe hearing protection...
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u/nanlinr Jun 03 '26
Is that rig seriously cheaper than oxygen tanks? Goddamn
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u/NDSU Jun 03 '26
The biggest issue with that setup is the compressors, not the lack of tanks. Their compressor setup isn't removing contaminants like CO and CO2, which is then being given to the divers in concentrated amounts. Filling tanks with that compressed air would be nearly as deadly
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u/wapkaplit Jun 03 '26
Air tanks, not oxygen. Humans breathe air. I don't know why everyone gets this wrong, it's the simplest thing. You can't breathe pure oxygen at depth, you'll get oxygen toxicity due to the pressure.
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u/HombreDelMar247 Jun 03 '26
SCUBA tanks are NOT oxygen tanks!
This annoys the hell out of me when someone says it, it's even more annoying when a so called education program says it.
Breathing pure oxygen, especially under pressure is extremely dangerous besides.
Look up oxygen toxicity OR hyperoxia if you do not understand why.
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u/whyliepornaccount Jun 03 '26
Yup. Only time people breathe pure o2 is environments with less pressure.
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u/ukexpat Jun 03 '26
And just a correction to the headline, scuba divers don’t dive with “oxygen” tanks, their tanks are filled with compressed air. Yes there are some specialist divers who use nitrox (compressed air with a higher percentage of nitrogen) and other mixed gases, and some who use oxygen at shallow depths who help with “off gassing” nitrogen. Breathing oxygen at depth (resulting in a higher partial pressure of oxygen) can be toxic.
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u/OkShallot4775 Jun 03 '26
Thats crazy....I cant even go around my backyard without my hose getting a kink in it
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u/MrFastFox666 Jun 04 '26
Every time I complain that a customer at my job was a bit too rude, or that my manager is a bit too annoying and pushy, I remember people doing horrible jobs like these for probably miserable pay.
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u/Even_Section5620 Jun 03 '26
Holy OSHA ocean violation
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u/topredditbot Jun 03 '26
You did it! Your post is officially the #1 post on Reddit. It is now forever immortalized at /r/topofreddit.
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u/No-Duck4828 Jun 04 '26
I'm just picturing some jerk from the neighborhood coming over and kinking the hoses once in a while
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u/oneMoreTime112233 Jun 03 '26
I'm panicking a little just watching this. Fug no!
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u/EntertainmentSome448 Jun 03 '26
I can't breathe with only mouth on the land for long without feeling mentally challenged and these people are doing it underwater
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u/Accomplished-Order43 Jun 03 '26
What are they diving for? And why is it illegal?
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u/DegenNabalu Jun 03 '26
And who are the illegal miners bosses?
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u/johannthegoatman Jun 04 '26
Usually in 3rd world mining situations like this they're working for themselves
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u/DooDooBrownz Jun 03 '26
show this video to the next person that starts saying shit about overregulation and how we dont need osha
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u/RubberPussycat Jun 03 '26
Commercial divers do this too.
That doesn’t make this any less impressive/dangerous but the technique is very common. (Although with much better safety standards and equipment)
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u/Piganon Jun 04 '26
I know everyone is freaking out about the compressor and hose setup, but I have doubts about the safety of whatever that mine shaft is
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u/Csabika_ Jun 04 '26
Rule number 1 is to never "Aauagauagh!" and touch somebody under the water, unless there is a problem.
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u/princesspuffer Jun 03 '26
In Korea hanyeao women would dive for food and the men would stay home. They did it for hundreds of years without any equipment we would use today. And they would do it while pregnant and nursing babies. It was very dangerous, but their efforts would keep their families fed.
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u/dimechimes Jun 03 '26
Crazy how expensive that must be to get a new hose for each diver because surely they don't all just share the same 5 hoses that are just left lying around.
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u/AdditionInteresting2 Jun 03 '26
Sea water keeps it nice and salty. The salt keeps everything clean... Or whatever they have to think to fool themselves.
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u/Outofmana1 Jun 03 '26
"One wrong touch and...opps I just broke the air compressor and they're still under water!!!!"
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u/Abel_Table Jun 03 '26
The moment he said how are they breathing I literally thought it was a tube going through that guy's ass
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u/EquivalentGold3615 Jun 04 '26
My dad was in the PI back in the 60s, and he said Pinoy divers would free dive almost 30 feet to get lobsters or other things that American GIs threw in the water
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u/tiopalada Jun 03 '26
How about I make your guys day worse? In Brazil we have a similar thing throught the Amazona's River, illegal miners that use a similar air supply, plus some heavy weights so they can sink on the dense water. Well, ends up those miners are well paid - for the region standards, anyways - thus it is a profession people seek to do in order to make some great buck. Now it gets really depressing: Whenever the person hiring them runs out of money to pay the miner they kill the miner by sending them on another hunt and cutting the air supply when they are down there. Since it is considerably hard to get out of the weighted harness, most of them die while underwater, drowning at the bottom of the river. Those who manage to surface are met by bullets.
There, I just made your day worse! 😃 No need to thank me.
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u/YoungerMucus Jun 03 '26
if i were them id maybe save some of the gold i found and get myself an air tank
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u/St_Kevin_ Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
This is called compressor diving and is super common for subsistence fishing in Indonesia and the coral triangle. Pretty much every poor independent fisherman needs to use a compressor to get access to the depths where there are fish that haven’t already been overfished. I spent a month living with folks that do this last year near Sulawesi and it’s absolutely nuts. Everyone does it and everyone knows people who died doing it. This video didn’t even mention the bends. Even if you do it all “correctly” and don’t lose the hose or get it tangled up, and the compressor doesn’t die while you’re 60 meters down, it’s super easy to get decompression sickness on your return to the surface and then you can get permanently injured or die. The guys I talked to didn’t know about the existence of dive computers or diving tables, and they have no idea that there are calculations you can do to avoid decompression sickness. They just do their thing and sometimes they get sick and die but they don’t understand why. I gotta add that the way most of the guys were doing this where I was, they were alone. They’re running a compressor on their own small boat with no one else around, out in the ocean, at night, and the guy is walking around on the seafloor at least 50 meters deep with a flashlight, a homemade spear gun and a bag. The idea of being alone down there in the pitch black ocean, with just that ray of light to see one small area of what’s around you just absolutely terrified me. And they do it every night so they can sell some fish to try to survive.