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Pearl hunting, also known as pearl fishing or pearling, is the activity of recovering or attempting to recover from wild Mollusca, usually or , in the sea or freshwater. Pearl hunting was prevalent in India and Japan for thousands of years. On the northern and north-western coast of Western Australia pearl diving began in the 1850s, and started in the Torres Strait Islands in the 1860s, where the term also covers diving for nacre or mother of pearl found in what were known as .
In most cases the pearl-bearing live at depths where they are not manually accessible from the surface, and diving or the use of some form of tool is needed to reach them. Historically the molluscs were retrieved by freediving, a technique where the diver descends to the bottom, collects what they can, and surfaces on a single breath. The diving mask improved the ability of the diver to see while underwater. When the surface-supplied diving helmet became available for underwater work, it was also applied to the task of pearl hunting, and the associated activity of collecting pearl shell as a raw material for the manufacture of buttons, and other decorative work. The surface supplied diving helmet greatly extended the time the diver could stay at depth, and introduced the previously unfamiliar hazards of barotrauma of ascent and decompression sickness.
In order to find enough pearl oysters, free-divers were often forced to descend to depths of over 100 feet on a single breath, exposing them to the dangers of hostile creatures, waves, eye damage, and drowning, often as a result of shallow water blackout on resurfacing.H. Rahn (1965). 9780309013413, National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council. . ISBN 9780309013413 Because of the difficulty of diving and the unpredictable nature of natural pearl growth in pearl oysters, pearls of the time were extremely rare and of varying quality.
In the time of colonial slavery in northern South America (off the northern coasts of modern Colombia and Venezuela), slaves were used as pearl divers.Michele Robinson, 'Luxuries that cost human life? Pearls in Early Modern Italy', Refashioning the Renaissance, August 2020 A diver's career was often short-lived because the waters being searched were known to be shark-infested, resulting in frequent attacks on divers. A slave who discovered a great pearl could sometimes purchase his freedom.Leslie B. Rout Jr. (1976). 052120805X, Cambridge University Press. 052120805X
The Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s made it hard to get good prices for pearl shell. The natural pearls found from harvested oysters were a rare bonus for the divers. Many fabulous specimens were found over the years. By the 1930s, over-harvesting had severely depleted the oyster beds. The US government was forced to strictly regulate the harvest to prevent the oysters from becoming extinct, and the Mexican government banned all pearl harvesting from 1942 to 1963.
Pearl diving in the Ohio River and Tennessee River rivers of the United States still exists today.
As this system continued to grow, more and more oyster beds were discovered along the Latin American coast, including near Riohacha on Colombia's Guajira Peninsula. However, due to over-exploitation of both indigenous labor and the oyster beds, the Spanish pearl economy soon plummeted. By 1540, previous Spanish settlements along the coast had been abandoned as the Spanish looked elsewhere for more labor and newer markets. The pearl industry was partially revived in the late sixteenth century when Spaniards replaced indigenous labor with African slave labor.
Oyster harvesting methods remained much the same along the coast and varied depending on the divers' conditions, the region's topography, and a Spanish master's work demands.
The divers were locked in their quarters at night by the Spaniards, who believed that if the divers (who were mostly male) compromised their chastity, they would not be able to submerge but rather float on the water. The divers who either had a small catch or rebelled were beaten with whips and tied in shackles. The working day lasted from dawn till dusk and being underwater, along with bruises, could affect the health of some divers. Furthermore, it is well known that the coastal waters were often infested with sharks, so shark attacks were quite frequent as well. As the fisheries continued to diminish, slaves hid some of the valuable pearls and exchanged them for clothing with their bosses.
On Cubagua Island, another Venezuelan island, the Spaniards used natives as slave labor in their initial attempts to establish a thriving pearl market in this area. Indians, especially those from Lucayo in the Bahamas, were taken as slaves to Cubagua since their diving skills and swimming capabilities were known to be superb. Likewise, the Spaniards began to import African slaves as the indigenous populations died off from disease and over-exploitation and Africans became so preferred by the Spanish over indigenous labor that a royal decree of 1558 decreed that only Africans (and no natives) should be used for pearl diving. Like other pearl diving groups controlled by the Spanish, the pearl divers could be treated harshly based on their daily pearl retrieval. Unlike the other pearl diving groups, however, the divers on Cubagua were Human branding on their face and arms with the letter "C," which some scholars argue stood for Cubagua.
The pearl diving process in Cubagua varied slightly from other Spanish pearl diving practices. Here, there were six divers per boat and divers worked together in pairs to collect the pearls. These pearl divers used small pouches tied to their necks to collect the oysters from the sea bottom. Some scholars have reported that because of the climate in Cubagua, the heat would cause the oysters to open themselves, making the pearl extraction process a bit simpler. Natives, unlike Africans, were given less rest time and could potentially be thrown off the boat or whipped to commence work sooner. Similar to slaves on Margarita Island, all pearl diving slaves were chained at night to prevent escape; in addition, deaths not only resulted from shark attacks, but also from hemorrhaging caused by rapid surfacing from the water and intestinal issues induced by constant reentry into cold water.
For thousands of years, most seawater pearls were retrieved by divers working in the Indian Ocean, in areas such as the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and in the Gulf of Mannar (between Sri Lanka and India). A fragment of Isidore of Charax's itinerary was preserved in Athenaeus's 3rd-century Sophists at Dinner, recording freediving for pearls around an island in the Persian Gulf.Ἰσίδωρος Χαρακηνός [Isidore of Charax]. Τὸ τῆς Παρθίας Περιηγητικόν Tò. century AD in Ἀθήναιος [Athenaeus]. Δειπνοσοφισταί Deipnosophistaí ,, , 93E. century Trans. Charles Burton Gulick as Athenaeus'', Harvard University Press (Cambridge), 1927. Accessed 13 Aug 2014.
Pearl divers near the Philippines were also successful at harvesting large pearls, especially in the Sulu Archipelago. In fact, pearls from the Sulu Archipelago were considered the "finest of the world" which were found in "high bred" shells in deep, clear, and rapid tidal waters. At times, the largest pearls belonged by law to the sultan, and selling them could result in the death penalty for the seller. Nonetheless, many pearls made it out of the archipelago by stealth, ending up in the possession of the wealthiest families in Europe. Streeter's Pearls and pearling life dedicates a chapter to the Sooloo islands. Streeter was one of the leading and most influential English jewelers in the 19th century and outfitted his own Schooner the Shree-Pas-Sair which he sailed as well and on which he himself went pearl fishing in 1880. (See for illustration of divers on Schooner Pearl fishers obtaining the world's best pearls. Streeter furthermore led a consortium to compete with Baron Rothschild to lease Ruby mines in Burma. Pearling was popular in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Japan, India and some areas in Persian Gulf countries. The Gulf of Mexico was particularly famous for pearling, which was originally found by the Spanish explorers.
The shallow Persian Gulf produced many pearls, and the pearling industry flourished in Kuwait, UAE, and Qatar, with Bahrain producing the highest export. In the lower Gulf, the economic model was less centered on personal ornamentation and more on the pearls’ ability to facilitate trade. They were exchanged for essential commodities such as high-quality dates, rice, and luxury items including Indian cloth and Persian nuts. In contrast to the affluent traders of the upper Gulf—such as those in Bahrain and Kuwait—merchants in the lower Gulf frequently experienced cycles of indebtedness due to the unpredictable fluctuations in the pearl market.
The extraction and profit realization cycle of pearl hunting, which could extend up to a year, necessitated advances and loans. Consequently, merchants, regardless of their financial standing, often retained a disproportionate share of the eventual profits. This dynamic compelled divers to supplement their income with alternative jobs such as fishing, Trade, or other forms of hunting, thereby underlining the precarious nature of a livelihood dependent on pearls.
The financial risks inherent in pearl hunting were amplified by the lengthy period between extraction and sale. Market instabilities, marked by dramatic price fluctuations throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, frequently led to cycles of debt for both merchants and divers. Economic downturns—exemplified by a depression in 1908—intensified these challenges, as even prosperous years could not sustain families solely through diving. High interest rates on borrowed funds further compounded the financial burdens, leaving many coastal communities vulnerable to economic distress. Over-fishing, regional and world wars, poor weather, problems with debt – all of these were the factors that had been driving the market into the mire. The merchants had been struggling for decades and the , haulers and divers had been falling out over worsening conditions and poor yields for a very long time before the Great Depression of 1929.
The price for pearls increased throughout the nineteenth century, with the pearl trade expanding in this region. At this time, pearls from the Persian Gulf were being traded in Aleppo and Istanbul, and there is evidence that merchants would sail to India (particularly Bombay) to sell pearls. By the 1930s, there were a few traders traveling all the way to Paris to sell their pearls. In the early twentieth century, it was estimated that about a quarter of the population living in the Persian Gulf's littoral was involved with the pearl trade. In the Persian Gulf, the pearling industry was dominated by slave labor, and male slaves were used as pearl diversSuzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 265-66 until the final abolition of slavery in the Gulf states in the period of 1937–1971.
The pearling industry in this region reached its zenith around 1912, "the Year of Superabundance." During periods of acute scarcity—such as the nutritional crises of the 1940s—local populations resorted to unconventional sustenance practices like the consumption of dried, salted pearl mollusk meat. By the 1950s, however, dependency on pearls was replaced by dependency on oil, as oil was discovered and the oil industry became the dominant economic trade.
The operation of pearl boats was characterized by a well-defined social hierarchy; roles on the vessels were allocated based on necessity rather than age alone, and included:
On larger ships, these roles were more specialized, whereas smaller vessels often necessitated that crew members assume multiple responsibilities. Apprentices, often starting as tabab between the ages of seven and fifteen, could ascend within the boat's hierarchy over the span of a few years or a decade. Profit sharing from pearl sales was pre-arranged and distributed according to factors such as crew debt and the captain's discretion, offering a mechanism for financial and social advancement despite the inherent uncertainties of the industry.
In the 1870s, pearling began in the Torres Strait, off Far North Queensland. By the 1890s, pearling was the largest industry in the region, and had a huge impact on coastal Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Because of the dangers of diving, almost no white people participated, and Asian, Pacific, and Indigenous Australians were used as cheap labor for the industry. Shells were the main aim for collection, and the whole industry was essentially a colonial one geared to procuring mother-of-pearl for sale to overseas markets for the making of . As time went on and sources were depleted, divers were encouraged to dive deeper, making the enterprise even more dangerous. Divers experimented with the heavy diving suit, discarding the full diving suit and using the helmet and corselet only, which became standard practice until 1960. "Hookah" gear, tested to in 1922, was considered unsuitable for the strong tides in these waters, and the later Scuba diving equipment did not supply enough air to spend the time required underwater and for decompression while surfacing
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