Pearl hunting

 

Pearl hunting

The action of recovering pearls from wild mollusks, mainly oysters or mussels, in the sea or freshwater is known as pearl hunting. Pearl hunting was once quite popular in the Arabian Gulf and Japan. Pearl diving began in the 1850s on Australia's northern and western coasts, and in the 1870s in the Torres Strait, off the coast of Far North Queensland.

In most cases, pearl-bearing mollusks reside at depths that are inaccessible by hand from the surface, necessitating diving or the employment of a tool to reach them. The mollusks were traditionally gathered by freediving, a technique in which a diver lowers to the ocean's depths, collects what they can, and then resurface on a single breath. The diver's ability to see while underwater was enhanced by the diving mask. When the surface-supplied diving helmet became accessible for underwater operations, it was also used for pearl hunting and gathering pearl shell as a raw material for the creation of buttons, inlays, and other decorative work.

The diver's ability to stay at depth was substantially increased by the surface-supplied diving helmet, which also presented the previously unknown risks of barotrauma during ascent and decompression sickness.

History

The only way to get pearls before the turn of the century was to hand pick vast numbers of pearl oysters or mussels from the ocean floor, lake, or river bottom. Following that, the bivalves were taken to the surface, opened, and the tissues were examined. It took more than a tonne of searching to find at least 3-4 good beds.

Free-divers were frequently compelled to descend to depths of over 100 feet on a single breath in order to collect enough pearl oysters, exposing them to the perils of hostile organisms, waves, eye damage, and drowning, often as a result of shallow water blackout on resurfacing. [2] Pearls were highly uncommon and of diverse quality at the time due to the difficulty of diving and the unpredictable nature of natural pearl formation in pearl oysters.

Asia

In Asia, some pearl oysters might be discovered on shoals at a depth of 5–7 feet (1.325–2 metres), but most divers had to travel 40 feet (12 metres) or even 125 feet (40 metres) deep to obtain enough pearl oysters, and these deep dives were highly dangerous. Divers in Asia in the nineteenth century had only the most basic sorts of technology to help them survive at such depths. They oiled their bodies to conserve heat in some regions, put greased cotton in their ears, and so on.

For thousands of years, most seawater pearls were retrieved by divers working in the Indian Ocean, in places like the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Mannar (between Sri Lanka and India).[4] Athenaeus' 3rd-century Sophists at Dinner preserved a fragment of Isidore of Charax's Parthian itinerary, recording freediving for pearls around an island in the Persian Gulf .[5]

 

Divers in the Philippines, particularly in the Sulu Archipelago, have also been successful in obtaining huge pearls. In fact, pearls found in "high bred" shells of deep, clean, and swift tidal waters in the Sulu Archipelago were regarded the "finest of the world." Occasionally, By law, the greatest pearls belonged to the Sultan, and selling them may result in the seller's death. Despite this, numerous pearls were smuggled out of the archipelago and ended up in the hands of Europe's wealthiest families. [6] Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Japan, India, and certain Persian Gulf countries were known for pearling. The Gulf of Mexico was famed for pearling, which was first discovered by Spanish explorers.