In 1904 the price of shell (black-edge mother-of-pearl) fell to $250, U. S. gold per ton of 2240 pounds, from $700, the former price, with six hundred tons stored in London, Paris, Berlin, New York and San Francisco, making a prospective loss of $270,000 for 1904. There was an attempt to limit the production by a return to native diving. With dress the output would be about 500 tons for the year, with naked-diving 200 tons less. This would operate against the local government, as it not only levies $38.60 U.S. gold per metric ton as an export duty, but makes a large profit on the diving machines by way of license. The pearl fisheries of French Oceanica therefore face a grave situation.
Pearls are found occasionally on the western coast of Nicaragua at San Juan del Norte. The Panama coast still yields great quantities of pearls as it has done for many years. When Spain controlled the northwestern section of South America with the Isthmus to the borders of Guatemala, under the name of Colombia, immense quantities of pearls were sent home by the colonists.
It is recorded that 697 pounds of pearls were imported into Seville from Colombia in 1587. A large proportion of these undoubtedly came from the coasts of what is now Venezuela. The Panama or bullock shell as it is called, is not of the finest quality and the pearls are apt to be dark and inferior to the Indian pearls in luster as well as in color; nevertheless fine pearls are found there and the fisheries yield a greater average of black pearls than any other. Beautiful iridescent pearls are also found there.
The Pearl islands are on the east side of the Bay of Panama about forty miles from the city. The banks there may only be fished by divers but between Chiriqui and Veragua dredging is allowed. Since the United States government has become interested in this section there is a tendency here to exploit the Panama coasts and companies have been formed in the States for that purpose. The pearl fisheries formerly carried on along the coast of Ecuador about two hundred miles north of Guayaquil, are no longer operated.
On the Atlantic coast of South America the most fruitful pearl-banks lie along the coast of Venezuela and west to Rio Hacha on the Colombian coast. This was the first part of the American mainland sighted by Columbus and the quantities of pearls owned by the natives did much to draw the tide of adventurers which set this way in the sixteenth century.
The oysters are taken from reefs and bars about one mile from shore and about the islands. The principal beds are at El Tirano, north-east, and Macanao, north-west of the island of Margarita. There are fisheries also at the neighboring Islands of Coche and Cubagua. About four hundred sail-boats of from three to fifteen tons, employing two thousand men, are constantly at work in these fisheries.
A French company purchased a concession about the year 1900 from a Venezuelan to fish in this neighborhood. It was to pay the Venezuelan government 10 per cent. of the profits as royalty and use divers and diving apparatus so as to select the oysters and avoid waste of the immature. Fishing by natives is done mostly by dredging with metal scoops. It is estimated that upwards of $600,000 worth of pearls are found about the island of Margarita per annum, most of them going to the Paris market.
Exclusive rights have been granted a Venezuelan citizen by the local government lately to exploit the Gulf of Cariaco for pearls and other sea products. The contract is for twenty-five years. Certain advantages are guaranteed by the government which is to receive fifteen per cent. of the net profits of the enterprise.
About forty or fifty years ago several English companies conducted profitable fisheries in the lower Gulf of Maracaibo and on the coasts of the Goajira territory and Paraguana. They employed Indians as divers. Revolutionary troubles during the last twenty-five years so demoralized the Indians, that the industry was finally broken up. Reports from authoritative sources indicate, that not only could paying fisheries be established here, but that the interior is rich in minerals and precious stones.
Until lately there have been few restrictions upon fishing along the Venezuelan coast beyond a tax of fifty dollars imposed by local authorities upon the buyers and the payment of fifteen bolivars ($2.90) by each boat for a fishing permit at Margarita.