In the past, some of the world’s finest natural pearls came from the Gulf region. As early as the third millennium BC, the Sumerians may have been the first to discover the pearl, while gathering oysters along the shores of the Gulf. Gulf oysters were gathered for their mother-of-pearl, which was used as an inlay material in ancient Egypt as early as the sixth dynasty (3200 BC).
Pearling in the Gulf dates back several thousand years, taking place along natural oyster beds found in underwater geological formations known as the pearl banks. The pearl-banks pearling grounds stretch along the Arabian side of the Gulf, from Kuwait and the island of Bahrain in the west, to Oman on the tip of the Arabian peninsula at the Strait of Hormuz, and to Kish Island in Iran on the Persian side of the Gulf.
European interest in the pearl banks of the Gulf region was recorded in the early writings from Greek and Macedonian explorers, and Ptolemy wrote about the pearl fisheries which existed at Tylos, the Roman name for the present day Bahrain. In the Greek historian Pliny’s book Historia Naturalis, he wrote: “the most perfect and exquisite pearls are found in Arabia, within the Gulf.”
From the 1600s on, pearls banks were exploited in the waters around Bahrain, near Dalmah Island off Abu Dhabi, Abu Musa, Ormus, and the Lavan-Kish island group.
Due to the high demand for mother-of-pearl from the native mollusk, the easily accessible oysters that bred in the shallow tidal waters became over-harvested, and it became increasingly necessary to perform deep diving for oyster collection.