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PEARL FISHERIES
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supervision. Natives are now being trained to use the dress.
Few
pearls are found and it not infrequently happens that as many as
fifteen to twenty tons of shells are raised without finding a single
pearl of value. At this time shells from these fisheries bring from
$500 to $750 per ton in the New York market. Helmets have been used to
some extent throughout the Pacific for a number of years, but many were
crude affairs, carelessly managed and the loss of life was as great as
by naked-diving. The training of the natives to the use of the more
modern appliances will however engender confidence and the probability
is that dress-diving will become general in the south seas wherever the
industry is organized.
As
a rule the largest oysters and pearls, where there is a calcareous
foundation for the bed, are taken from the deeper waters, and it is
probable that as modern appliances are more generally used by the
larger organizations now taking hold of the industry, the fisheries
will be extended with good results in many localities to waters beyond
the shallows now fished. More syste-
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