Pearl Hunting When we wear our pearls, we all know that it comes from the bottom of the sea, contained within special oysters. However, most people using pearl jewelry are unaware of the fact that pearl has a fascinating journey from the bottom of the ocean two our fingers, ears and neck. This is a journey that every natural pearl has been traversing for hundreds of years. So essentially, the story of pearl hunting is similar to a biography of the pearl itself.
A pearl is formed inside a special type of oyster known as the pearl oyster, usually found in sea-beds. Some places such as china have freshwater oyster beds but most natural pearls come from the sea. Regions famous for Pearl Hunting were tropical waters around India, Sri Lanka and other places like Indonesia and areas around the red sea and the Persian Gulf. Pearl hunting in these places has gone on for centuries, even millennia and each place has a distinct culture associated with the process.
Throughout recorded history, Pearl Hunting has generally been carried out by very specialized divers who would dive down to the sea bed to collect oysters. This was obviously a long and tedious process since only a few of the oysters captured ever had a pearl in them. This was the chief reason why pearls were gems of such high value through the centuries.
There is a lot of folklore associated with pearl hunting, especially with that of the pearl divers. It is common knowledge that they are expert swimmers but they have been known to have dived as deep as 100 feet on a single breath in order to reach oyster beds which lay deep under the sea!
This feat becomes even more incredible knowing that throughout the centuries there wasn’t really any assistance that the divers would get in Pearl Hunting. Often all they carried was a sack or a basket to collect the oysters and a heavy rock that they help on to in order to avoid the effort of swimming down to the depth.
Needless to say pearl hunting was a dangerous profession throughout most of history. Hence there has always been a charm and aura associated with pearl divers, poor people who risked their lives just so that a few small beads of might be extracted from the bottom of the sea.
Pearl divers and pearl hunting has spawned a host of stories, some significant ones being related to the breed of women pearl divers who were present in Japan.
However, truth was a bit far off from fiction in case of Pearl Hunting. Pearl divers were usually very poor people who had been in the trade over generations. They were accorded very low social status in the ancient world, much like the fishermen. Their job was dangerous and the mortality rate was high since they were no safety measures available for them.
While the advent of cultured pearls has taken the world by storm, Pearl Hunting still continues to exist. Even today, expert pearl divers use only a diving goggle with a small tube attached to head down to the depths and look for pearl oysters.
It is a highly specialized art, the most important part being to recognize the right oysters to collect.
While times may have changed, the approach to Pearl Hunting still remains similar. It is a dangerous profession which yields very few precious beads. So the next time you wear a natural pearl, think of the pearl’s journey to your jewelry.
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