10 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOGY— PART II 



The export from Bombay consists solely of shells fished on the Kathiawar coast, 

 so far as I am able to learn. These " Siirti " shells, as they are known in trade circles, 

 share with the Tuticorin and Rameswaram shells the honour of being esteemed of first 

 quality. To-day these shells command an average price of not less than Rs. 180 per 1,000 

 in the wholesale market at Calcutta. 



From the foregoing facts it is abundantly clear that, barring the pearl fisheries 

 of the Gulf of Mannar, the chank fishery is beyond comparison the most important 

 of Indian shell-fish industries. Year in and year out the chank fishery produces 

 regularly from 2 to 2| lakhs of rupees per annum (£13,300 to £16,600) whereas the pearl 

 fishery may prove wholly unproductive for many years together, though when it does yield 

 a return, it does so with no niggard hand. The pearl fishery owes much to the chank- 

 fishery ; the latter is the school where boys and men of the fisher population pass their 

 apprenticeship and qualify for the feverish days of a pearl fishery — a time when a gambler's 

 lust for gain enters the diver's breast and makes him forget or ignore danger, and despise 

 sleep and comfort in the race to gather the pearly treasures put at his disposal for an 

 all-too-brief season, counted by days, and limited by the tempest. 



