Carrying 10kg of iron chains, 4m deep in the riverbed, facing death is inevitable. Those are the things that shady hunters in Da Nang have to go through every day.

Tie 10kg of iron chain to the body, and plunge to the bottom of the river to hunt mussels (Video: Hoai Son).

Around 7 am, Mr. Nguyen Van Anh (50 years old, residing in Tho Quang ward, Son Tra district) brought his tools, and pulled his homemade “boat” towards the big culvert of Tho Quang fishing port to hunt mussels.

When he got there, he looked at the water and lamented: “It’s so cloudy, I don’t know how to dive”. After saying that, he quickly put on a diving suit, carrying a piece of iron chain weighing more than 10kg on his body.

“Is the machine finished, ma’am?” Anh shouted loudly for his wife to check the ventilator. “The phone is fine, sir,” Anh’s wife replied. When his wife confirmed that the inspection was complete, Anh assuredly put the diving goggles on his face.

Checking the system again, Mr. Anh swam to the middle of the sewer. “This job is like that, you must have a ventilator, danger is always lurking under the water”, before finishing the sentence, Anh had dived under the cloudy water.

Besides, Mr. Phan Thanh Truc (44 years old, residing in Tho Quang ward, Son Tra district) has just finished equipping himself with diving equipment. “This season, the water is very cold, each dive is usually 5-15 minutes long. When the basket is full, the whole person freezes!”, Mr. Truc said.

Like Mr. Anh, Mr. Truc wears a ventilator and dives deep in the riverbed. According to Mr. Truc, the job of a diver is not fixed in time, sooner or later it depends on the water.

To do this job, you must have good health and experience. Diving can cause problems such as the ventilator breaking midway while in a deep water position. When discovered, divers must immediately surface, otherwise they will lose their lives.

This time, Mr. Truc had to dive more than 4m deep and walk to the bottom to search. In the murky water, he tried to “sniff” where the mussels were clinging. When he saw “goods”, he used a special tool to chisel each one and put it in the basket.

After 15 minutes, Mr. Truc “tears” the water and then emerges, holding the spoils in his hand. With more than 5 years of diving experience, he is used to walking underwater for such a long time.

“The goods are too thin, ma’am. This trip is probably not much”, just finished speaking, Mr. Truc used all his strength to push the basket full of mussels up for his wife to stand on the shore. This batch, he is estimated to get about 20kg.

The mussels are at the bottom of the river, so they must be washed before being brought to the shore. Anh said that every morning he works about 6 hours, dives 1-2 quintals, and earns 300,000 – 500,000 VND (20$).

Mussel is the name Da Nang people give to a bivalve mollusk, like a black mussel. They are about the size of a finger, have a black shell, and live mainly on cliffs, and bamboo poles in freshwater and brackish water.

The mining season starts from May to November every year. This species has little meat and is food caught as food for lobsters.

Mr. Truc said that before, no one had bought this type of seafood, so no one caught it. Only in recent years, traders have bought a lot, so people have new jobs. Mussels are purchased at the price of 3,500 VND(0,2$)/kg.

Diving work usually ends at 12 noon. Despite the hardship, the divers are still smiling after a day of hard work on the riverbed.

When asked why the profession is inherently dangerous, but the divers are so “haunted”, Mr. Truc laughed and answered: “For a living, for the sake of food, money, you should take a risk!”.