The Pearl, its story, its charm, and its value

by Wallis Richard Cattelle

On the Madras (India) side the banks are off Tinnevalli and Madura at Tuticorin. The Indian revenue realized a profit of £13,000 from a fishing here in 1822, and £10,000 from another in 1830. Examinations showed that there were not sufficient oysters for profitable fishing after that until 1860, when the government netted £20,000, and a fishing the following year, 1861, was equally successful. The banks failed in 1862 and there was no fishery until 1874. Pollution of the water from the Indian shores has been detrimental to these banks and they are now of little importance.

On the Ceylon side, the banks lie six to eight miles off the west shore and a little south of the island of Manaar. Fishing has been an industry from early times before history began. There are records of these fisheries under the kings of Kandy and later by the Portuguese after they took possession of Ceylon about 1505, to 1655 when the island passed into the hands of the Dutch. In old times they were called the fisheries of Aripo after a fort on the coast. Not until the English gained control were the fisheries so managed that definite knowledge of the results could be obtained.

After the Dutch gave way to the English, until 1903, these fisheries had yielded a net income to the government of over £1,000,000. This covered a period of over one hundred years, as the British occupied Ceylon in 1796. In the early years of this period and prior to that, the fishings, or rights to fish, were sold to the highest bidders, usually Hindu merchants. In 1796 the fishing brought £60,000. The year after the British took possession, 1797, it realized £110,000 that amount having been paid by Candappa Chetty, a native of Jaffna for the fishery right, and for that of 1798, the same renter paid £140,000.

These fishings, which were prolonged, so exhausted the banks that the fishery of 1799 yielded but £30,000. From 1799 to 1802 the yearly product ranged from £12,000 to £55,000. In 1804 they were leased for £120,000 but from that time on declined so that in 1828 they brought only £30,612. There were no fishings from 1820 to 1827, nor in 1834 and after 1837, until 1855. The supply failed in 1864 and for several succeeding years, and again for a decade, after five successful fishings from 1887 to 1891. The average yearly profit up to 1891 was about £34,000.

The Ceylon and Madras fisheries are now in charge of a government officer, who spends a part of each year inspecting the various banks so as to be informed as to the whereabouts of mature oysters, and the location and progress of the young and immature. They keep a record of their condition at different periods, and regulate the fisheries by permitting fishing only when they consider the banks to be ripe for it.

The oysters mature in from four to six years so that ordinarily a bank may be fished once in that period, but it sometimes happens that the young oysters are swept away by violent storms or crowded out by natural enemies. In 1901 the Ceylon banks were found to be in a bad way, there were plenty of young oysters but none full-grown. The government officers could not account for the condition, and in response to a report of the facts the government sent Prof. W. A. Herdman to Ceylon in 1902. He examined the whole of the bottom of the Gulf of Manaar and discovered banks on which were full-grown oysters, so that a fishing was fixed for the 23rd of February 1903. Weather prevented commencement until the second of March, when fishing began and lasted forty-two working days until April the fourteenth. The fishings take place in March and April because the sea is usually calm at that period.

The banks lie in five to ten fathoms over a shallow area nearly fifty miles long by twenty miles broad, opposite Aripo. A steep declivity on the western edge gives the sea a depth of one hundred fathoms in a few miles. In the centre of the southern part of the Gulf of Manaar, west of the Chilaw pearl-banks, the sea is one to two thousand fathoms deep.

Of all the paars, or oyster-beds (paar means rock or hard bottom) the Periya paar is the largest. It is about eleven nautical miles long and from one to two miles broad. Situated in about five to ten fathoms close to the top of the western slope of the shallows, and running north and south about twenty miles from land, it is exposed to the southwest monsoon which runs up toward the Bay of Bengal for about six months of the year. The natives call this the mother-paar, believing that the young oysters are carried from it to the other paars, which are thus stocked at its expense.

Between 1880 and 1902 twenty-one examinations showed that the Periya paar had been naturally stocked eleven times with enormous quantities of young oysters, which as regularly disappeared before they were old enough to yield a fishing. The most reliable paars are in the Cheval district and it is probable that the government, acting on the suggestion of Prof. Herdman, will hereafter dredge the breeding Periya paar of its young oysters and plant them where they will be able to mature. It is estimated that many millions of millions of oysters have been lost from this paar during the last twenty-five years.

A fishing is not only a matter of commercial importance, but of wide-spread interest among the natives of Ceylon and India. The romance of the situation, the hope of gain, the great gathering of people from many and far-off countries, the opportunities for barter, the possibilities of securing priceless gems for little, and for making money quickly, all appeal to the oriental mind.