THE PEARL INDUSTRY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21156, 1 October 1938, Page 11

THE PEARL INDUSTRY

DIVERS FACE MANY DANGERS Pearls, real and imitation, are again becoming a favourite adornment for women. Not only are they worn in brooches, bangles, and necklaces, but dress designers are stitching them to silks and fine woollens. Pearls should be of particular interest to Australians, for the last great pearl field to be found in the world is that huge one off the coast of Northern Australia, extending for no less than 3,000 miles from Queensland through Torres Strait to Western Australia.

This field produces the best pearl shell in the world. Very often shells weigh up to 141 b, and are a foot in diameter. There is also found ordinary pearl shell known as “blacklip,” weighing about one and a-half pounds and seven inches in diameter. Western Australian shell is small and only valuable for the pearl it may contain. Lastly, there is the Shark Bay shell, growing in thick clusters. This is not dived for, but raked up by dredges, and the oysters are torn from the shell and thrown into barrels to rot. Any pearls in this mass are subsequently sieved out. The pearls are to-day a subsidiary to the industry; shell is the main item. Owing to the fact that diving is to-day carried on well out at sea, the men at once abstract any pearls from these huge oysters, and the owners, unable to control or keep check on the results, have made a virtue of necessity, and

all pearls found are the rightful perquisite of the men. Each year thousands of pounds worth of pearls are found, and these Australian grounds have produced many historic gems. Perhaps the most famous was found in 1833 at Baldwin, Western Australia, the well-named Southern Cross, composed of seven pearls in a row, valued at £lO,OOO.

The finest pearl ever discovered in Australia was a drop-shaded gem as big as a sparrow’s egg, weighing 100 grains, and found in 1927, also off the coast of Western Australia. This pearl is called the Star of the West, and was valued at £14.000. Many more historical gems have been found off the Australian coast.

In the early days it was possible for shell to be gathered at low tide by natives. This supply soon became exhausted, and they then had to wade and finally dive for it. A little later the divers had to work in two or three fathoms of water from boats.

The price of shell in those days was as high as £4OO per ton, and profits were enormous, as the shell lay thick on the sea-bed and was easy to gather. As an example, in 1878 the Queensland Fishery alone employed 700 people and realised £112,320. To-day the price of shell has dropped by at least 75 per ceent.

Year by year the diving has had to be conducted farther from the coast. Native divers could only go down 40 or 50 feet, but the deposit of shell went far deeper, and more than 50 years ago regular diving dress was adopted, and is to-day the main method employed. The divers are nearly all Japanese and Malays. In the ’seventies the divers, who

were then white men, made £5OO a year, and the owners made a fortune, as rich, deep fields were opened up. The giant pearl shell is gathered, not on the coral reef, but in the passages between the islands, where it lies on mud and sand, very often hidden in seagrass. Diving Dangers Diving methods are interesting. The divers ride astride on the boat’s anchor regulated just above the ocean bed. The boat drifts, and the diver watches intently until he sees a patch of shell, when he jumps off his perch and gets to work. Fully clad in regulation suit and helmet, his air line the only connection with the outer world, his job is not a feather-bed one; it is an extremely dangerous occupation. There is unfortunately very often the temptation to exceed the depth safety limit, and each year many divers lose their lives through dread paralysis.

There are other dangers which lurk in the black depths—shark, octopus, and monster stingray, but worst of all are the huge groper which weigh up to five and six hundred pounds and know no fear. They wait under the coral ledges, and once they seize their prey all is over. They are responsible for much loss of life. The Cultured Pearl

Pearling has many fluctuations, but the riches of the ’seventies and ’eighties have gone for ever. In 1897 the record for Queensland was 1,300 tons of shell. The future may see many more magnificent pearls from Australian waters realise fabulous prices, but the cultured pearl has proved a powerful rival to the natural pearl. Very few jewellers can tell the difference quickly between a cultured pearl and a natural pearl. The cultured or cultivated pearl is totally different to the artificial pearl, which is composed of composition of little or no value.

Cultured pearls are actually the product of the oyster, but their growth is a fpreed process, and not Nature’s unassisted handwork. In the main, the Japanese arc the people who have experimented with oysters which produce real pearls, and they have after years of careful study and work, learnt to produce the cultured pearl. Women are chiefly employed in this delicate task, and the pearl wizards of Japan are as much at home in the water as on land.

Their system is to dive with their eyes protected by goggles and find immature oysters, mere specks, in fact. These miniature oysters are placed in cages, kept in the sea, and watched most carefully. Later, a highly technical operation is performed. In each oyster is placed a minute speck, around which the mother-of-pearl will form. The instrument used is gold-tipped. From time to time the cages are raised for inspection and later on the oysters are examined for pearls. A cultured pearl is a valuable gem, and not to be despised. Although infinite care is taken, the pearls won are small in number, and very few of really good quality result. Even when the process is finished and the pearl an acomplished fact, drilling is another source of danger, and even a small mistake during this stage will result in the loss of a valuable gem. From a Piece of Grit Oriental poets used to say that pearls grew from dewdrops swallowed by

oysters. Actually, in Nature, only unhealthy oysters produce pearls, es>ecially those with crumpled shells. The growth of natural pearls is the result of grit, sand grains, or splinters being driven into the mantle or flap skin in the oyster.

The foreign substance becomes coated with mother-of-pearl like the oyster shell, and the result is a pearl. Strangely enough, in cultivated pearls, the operators only insert the minute particles into the shells of healthy oysters, as under this artificial process they produce the finest pearls. Like every other gem, the pearl either gains or suffers in value from the dictates of fashion. The cultivation of pearls was a blow beneath the belt to natural pearls of average value, but a really fine natural pearl will always realise a good price in London, Paris, or New York, and many well-matched necklaces have historical associations and are worth a king’s ransou?. Artificial Pearls Tire art of making imitation pearls, it is interesting to note, is thousands of years old. A wonderful string, several yards long, was found recently in an Egyptian tomb, These, the oldest known imitation pearls, were made by coating glass with some gummy substance. Before this discovery it was thought that the first imitation pearls were those made by the Parisian Rosary maker, Jacquins, in 1680. He made his pearls by filling thin spheres of glass with a preparation made from the silvery scales of fish.