A legacy continued
The grandson of a Gulf pearl diver brings back the lustre of the region’s historic trade.
By Nicola Chilton
Abdulla Rashed Al Suwaidi is a man on a mission. Founder of the UAE’s first pearl farm, he wants to ensure that stories of the region’s pearling history are not lost. But it’s not only the stories he’s bringing back to life. Suwaidi Pearls, an oyster farm off the coast of Ras Al Khaimah, produces 32,000 pearls a year in the only facility of its type in the Gulf.
We take a dhow to the farm, gliding out of the fishing harbour at Al Rams village through a mangrove-flanked channel where more than 600 species of birds have been recorded and camels wander along the shoreline. As we approach, a row of buoys marks the location of the oyster cages beneath. Alighting onto a pontoon, Al Suwaidi shows me the tortoise-shell nose clips and stone weights used by divers in the past. Alongside is a 45-year-old wooden sama’a pearling boat. Space was tight and life for the divers was hard.
Al Suwaidi’s grandfather, Mohammed, was part of the last generation of Emirati pearl divers, and told stories of the long, arduous diving trips he and his friends undertook. The stories stayed with Al Suwaidi and drove him to revive his family’s pearling legacy. “My grandfather passed away before my children were born. They haven’t seen him, haven’t talked to him, haven’t listened to his stories,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense that this legacy stays in books. It has to be brought to life and told by those of us who have seen the people dive.”
The relationship between humans and pearls in the Gulf goes back millennia, but the thriving pearling industry collapsed in the 1930s with the advent of cheaper cultured pearls, pioneered in Japan.
Fewer than 1% of oysters produce a natural pearl, by seeding them you increase the likelihood dramatically. The rarity of natural pearls is reflected in the price they command.
The relationship between humans and pearls in the Gulf goes back millennia. An 8,000-year-old pearl was found by archaeologists on Marawah Island in Abu Dhabi in 2019. Explorers and travellers from Pliny the Elder to Al Idrisi referred to Gulf pearls, and 16th century Italian jeweller, merchant and author Gasparo Balbi wrote that the best pearls in the world came from Bahrain and Julfar, the former name of Ras Al Khaimah.
The Gulf’s thriving pearling industry collapsed in the 1930s when Kokichi Mikimoto, a Japanese entrepreneur, created cheaper cultured pearls and introduced them to global markets. It may seem ironic then that Al Suwaidi’s pearls have been developed in collaboration with experts from Japan’s Mie prefecture, where Mikimoto pioneered his technique.
“We started research in 2002 and produced our first cultured pearl in March 2005. The technicians who came from Japan thought it was a miracle,” Al Suwaidi says. It took just three months for the pearls to grow, three times faster than in Japan. The type of mollusc, water cleanliness, temperature and the time of year will influence the rate at which a mollusc deposits nacre to grow a cultured pearl. Al Suwaidi believes that the moderate temperatures and high salinity of the waters around his farm help to create a strong deposit of nacre more quickly than in other places.
“I knew that we would struggle to get natural pearls here, and even if we could, they would be unaffordable,” Al Suwaidi says. Fewer than 1% of oysters produce a natural pearl, by seeding them you increase the likelihood dramatically. The rarity of natural pearls is reflected in the price they command. Instead, he decided to seed oysters with mother-of-pearl fragments from oysters genetically linked to those that had been producing natural pearls for thousands of years.
A number of conditions, including water pollution and over-cultivation, have led to a decline in the yields and quality of pearls in Japan. “My grandfather suffered from the introduction of Mikimoto cultured pearls to the world market,” Al Suwaidi says. “But I won’t watch the deteriorating Japanese pearl industry and do nothing.”
Gulf pearl divers would free dive, using tortoise-shell nose clips. The farm produces some 32,000 pearls a year.
Al Suwaidi works collaboratively with pearl farmers and hatchery centres and has donated oysters to be cross-bred in Japan, creating stronger pearl oysters that produce thicker nacre. “Our region was the base for pearl trading in the past, and we’re now reviving the industry through technology and innovation,” he says.
Suwaidi Pearls operates on a small scale, favouring quality over volume. “I’m in the process of research and development, I’m not in a hurry to jump to mass production.”
It’s a labour-intensive business. Oysters at the farm are kept in underwater cages according to age and seeding date, allowing for easy monitoring. They stay in the cages for up to 18 months after seeding, and in summer they’re cleaned once a week. “We massage them with high-pressure water,” Al Suwaidi says, the process helps to remove worms and other marine pests, keeping the oysters healthy so that they produce high-quality pearls. The pearls are a range of colours, shapes and sizes, with 10% of the harvest being “high grade”. The majority are bought by visitors to the farm.
There’s an important ecological win, too. An oyster can filter up to 60 litres of seawater a day. Al Suwaidi likens oysters to trees. Where trees absorb carbon and release oxygen into the air, oysters filter sediment and release oxygen into the water. “Imagine when you have 10,000 of them, you’re effectively putting a water purification machine into the ocean. Every time we build up a farm it becomes surrounded by a lot of marine species, so we can see that the oysters are making a contribution to the ecosystem.”
Serendipitously, a turtle comes up for air, not far away. “These are the only thieves that attack our oysters, they love oyster meat. But I don’t mind,” he says with a smile.
Perhaps, in years to come, the work Al Suwaidi is doing on this farm off the coast of Ras Al Khaimah will help the UAE become a centre of pearl trading once again.
Photographs Courtesy of Suwaidi Pearls
