PEARL FISHING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 636, 14 September 1933, Page 2

PEARL FISHING

IN BRITISH RIVERS PEARL BEARING MUSSEL YIELDS RARE TREASURE. CROWN JEWEL FOUND. Only occasionally is the pearl-fisher to be seen at work in our British rivers to-day. Yhrough f orce of cfrcumstances he is becoming a rare bird, and moreover, at the speed at which we fiit through the country now, that figure in mid-stream, handling a rod and with what appears to be a creel about his middle, is easily and naturally mistaken for an angler. It is only on closer ecquaintance that these adjuncts of fishing become something interestingly different. It is to be feared, too, that if you saw apearler and poinfed him', out to your fellow-passengers the tale would be received with doubt, for it is not generally known that some of our northern rivers, along with streams in Wales . and Ir eland, but more especially in Seotland, carry a pearl-bearing freshwater mussel. And fishing for th'ese pearls is an ancient British dndustry. Tacitus mentions the British river pearl; so does Pliny; there is reference to it in the "Faerie Queene." The industry persists to-day, although the rewards are unusually poor; persists partly because there is a sort of family tradition associatedwith it, similar to that in the fishing ' industry and in the cotton trade. The man whom I found at work in a quiet sitretch of a little-known northern stream told me he had been at it all his working life, following his father, who had followed his father. This, the grandfather's time, would coincide with' a brisk boom in river pearls that sprang up about 1860. Prices rose, and as a 'result there was an immediate descent upon the rivers, by people never before associafed with pearling. It had disastrous results. The shallows, because they were more accessible, were soon denuded of their mussels; these shellfish, in fact, came near to extinction. Great Destruction. It may be only one in every few hundred mussels that bears a pearl, and the opening of the shell in order to explore for pearl means the death of the mussel. Destruction of freshwater mussels therefore went on on a grand scale, and the shallows hecame virtually unproductive. Something of the kind happened again in early post-war years. It was marked on this occasion by the ex-ten-sive use of motor-cycles to cover a wide area of rivers, so that destruction of mussels through intensive search went on on a mass scale. In the result the boom may be said to have killed itself, and many rivers and many Scottish burns were virtually ^ cleared of all their fresh-water mus-' sels. Scarcity has led to some appreciation of prices, but conditions ^ of to-day tend to a slump in the buying ■of these small pearls, so that few are now following the industry. Prices at one time r,an high. The man I came upon told me of a pearl he had got in the Forth which was valued at £40; but he offered me the choice of his day's catch, which easily lay in the palm of his hand, for 5s, Prices generally ruled from about 7s a grain, but unusually fine pearls have fetehed £10 a grain. The factors ruling here were rarity, quality and size. The Scottish rivers that yield the pearls are the Spey, Tay, South Esk, Doon, Dee, Don, Ytham and the Forth leading" them all; in Wales the Conway, with two kinds of pearl-bearing mussels, is an easy first. The pearling rivers of England appear to be confined cheifly to the North Country, with the Cumberland rivers relatively prolific. Pearls from British rivers figure among the Crown jewels, and tradition has it that one such pearl was given by Sir Richard Wynne, of Gwydir, to Catherine, wife of Charles II. The pearl-fisher's outfit is simple but interesting. It includes the usual type of waders. His rod is little more than a long stick, with a prong at the end for lifting the mussels. The most interesting item of his outfit is a sort of view-finder. This is a cylindrical affair of sheet tin, something like the domestic lading can. The bottom of this, regarding it as a lading can complete with' handle, has been knocked • out, and a circular piece of glass has been fitted in its place. The pearler 'dips this glass-covered end below the surface of the water and inspects the river ibed. The mussels he thus finds he spears with his pronged stick, and his catch is transferred to a bag or sack slung about his middle. When his catch is big enough he returns to the river bank and begins the work of opening up and -ispecting each mussel. It is a brief examination. The thumb is run round inside the shell, and any protuberance is removed| for closer examination. The discarded mussels are returned to the river. Finds are rare in relation to the mussels opened, and mussel destruction is great. As a trade! it is highly speculative and seems to rank a degree or two below casual work.