It is hot in the Rhein-Main-area in Germany now. At night the thermometer stays above 20 °C, during the day it goes up to 34° C. On the nightly weather reports this classifies for "tropical nights ". As they are very rare here, why not take a splash and put in a refreshing post about pearl diving in Abu Dhabi!
Two years ago, when on a conference in Abu Dhabi, I took part in a pearl fishing trip. Pearl fishing in the Arabian waters goes back a long time. The earliest settlements of people on the Arabian coast around the areas of Dubai and Abu Dhabi were pearl fishers. In fact, the very poor early Arab economies on the Persian Gulf were mainly reliant on pearl fishing since before 2000 BC and up until the 1920s, when artificial pearls were invented, and long before the oil industry started.
We went out on a reconstructed motorized dhow in the shallow waters of the harbour.
When we had cruised a while and were out of the harbour, we expected our guides to take of their dishdashs and keffiyes and jump into the water. But they laughed and went aft to fetch a couple of cooled boxes filled with sea water full of pearl oysters!
Every one of us chose an oyster and the guides showed us, how to open them with a special knife.
"Our" oysters were raised in banks for that purpose. Some visitors had to try and open several oysters, but in the end all of us "found" a pearl and it felt like christmas ...
Two years ago, when on a conference in Abu Dhabi, I took part in a pearl fishing trip. Pearl fishing in the Arabian waters goes back a long time. The earliest settlements of people on the Arabian coast around the areas of Dubai and Abu Dhabi were pearl fishers. In fact, the very poor early Arab economies on the Persian Gulf were mainly reliant on pearl fishing since before 2000 BC and up until the 1920s, when artificial pearls were invented, and long before the oil industry started.
We went out on a reconstructed motorized dhow in the shallow waters of the harbour.
When we had cruised a while and were out of the harbour, we expected our guides to take of their dishdashs and keffiyes and jump into the water. But they laughed and went aft to fetch a couple of cooled boxes filled with sea water full of pearl oysters!
Every one of us chose an oyster and the guides showed us, how to open them with a special knife.
Pearls are imbedded in the oyster's flesh. They can be compared to a cyst, that builds around an injury in the mantle tissue, when the lining of the oyster is pierced or hurt by parasites or some other intrusion. Layers upon layers of calcium carbonate and some organic substances are added from the mollusk's mantle to form the more or less round pearl. The pearl's luster comes from the numerous translucent coatings.
Sometimes, pearls are small and not easy to detect. You have to poke around in the oyster's flesh to feel for the hard substance and extract the pearl. Pearl oysters are not related to the edible oysters; the latter do not produce pearls with luster.
Abu Dhabi started these tours a couple of years ago as history tours, to show tourists not only the famous shopping malls in the area, but also a bit of the history of the people there and the beginnings of the settlements on the coast of the Arab peninsula.
"Our" oysters were raised in banks for that purpose. Some visitors had to try and open several oysters, but in the end all of us "found" a pearl and it felt like christmas ...
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