The bêche-de-mer, pearl-shell and trochus fisheries - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 69

'they'd be boiled up and the meat dried away and it was dried out or something,
because people used to eat it, and the shell would be bagged-up' . 6
Another informant described the abundance of trochus on reefs in the Cairns
area after the end of the Second World War . 7 In 1948, when he arrived in Cairns,
that informant recalled seeing 'all the luggers' and the 'trochus shell just lying
around' on the reefs . 8 T hat informant also recalled working on reefs near Mackay
and as far south as the Swain Reefs; throughout the period of the fishery, he
reported, trochus was plentiful on the reefs: 'it was everywhere'. He worked on
board a ketch-rigged vessel, and stated that hundreds of luggers were working
the reefs . 9 T he same informant described the processing of trochus - and also the
collection of an inferior type of shell, known as 'chicken-shell' - in the following
terms:
It fits inside a round tobacco tin; it's called chicken-shell and you're not
really supposed to harvest it. They made a half-hearted effort to check luggers
when they came in to see if there was any chicken-shell on board. The divers
used to hide it. […] Most of the boats fished one ton [of trochus] a day, with
sixteen crew members on board, and they carried the old, square 44-gallon
kerosene drums with a handle. [...] That's what they'd do the shelling in
when the shell came on board. In the afternoon there would be a fire started
in a 44-gallon drum that was split open a bit so that you could put another
44-gallon drum inside [...]. There was a hole cut out and you had mangrove
water. That would make the water boil. Then you threw the shells in. After a
few minutes you fished the shells out, put them on the deck, and all the crew
would sit around with their piece of wire and their hook on the end: put that
in the shell […] and they'd pull the meat out . 10
Another informant - also a former trochus diver - stated that in Cairns, in
1952, trochus-shell was valued at £500 per ton, and that divers were restricted
to collecting shells no smaller than two inches in diameter in order to conserve
trochus stocks . 11
In comparison with pearl-shelling, trochus diving had the advantage of not
requiring diving suits and mechanical breathing apparatus, because trochus could
be found on the tops and the sides of reefs in shallow water, as one informant
verifie d. 12 As Serventy (1955, pp75-6) stated:
Instead of the boards used for the tenders which are a feature of pearling
luggers, trochus boats have a large boiler attached to the stern. In here the
trochus is boiled, the meat extracted and either eaten by the crew or smoked
for sale ashore. The shell is packed ready for sale. It does not fetch the same
high price as pearl shell and is also a much more fluctuating market.
As a result of the fluctuating market - and because of the size limits imposed - the
trochus fishery did not result in such prolonged, widespread exploitation of coral