“Our mob in the West Kimberley and probably the whole West Australian midwest, north-west are the oldest pearlers in the world,” says Yawuru man Bart Pigram. We’re in the mangroves on Broome’s coastline, and as we walk at low tide my reef shoes sink and squelch.
We collect mud whelks (a mangrove snail) and Pinctada albina, a small species of pearl oyster about 10cm in diameter. Pigram later lights a small fire on the sand, cooking our little harvest. There’s the pleasing salinity of just-harvested seafood and the basic comfort of food imbued with smoke. The view into the mangroves isn’t half bad either. While Pigram guides for a living, this catch-and-cook-type experience isn’t something he does often, preferring to preserve what’s there for locals.
“We’ve been using it for 20,000, 30,000 years,” he says. “It was an extra resource because you would use it as a plate, and a canvas to scratch into and make your riji.”
Beyond traditional use, many associate pearl shells with cultured pearl production, and (especially in the pre-plastic age) a source of material for buttons. But pearl meat is also finding a place as a premium ingredient, from the firm white meat of the Pinctada maxima, at one time an unprized byproduct now highly priced, to the mussel-like Pinctada fucata, or akoya oyster, only seriously marketed as a food in the past few years.
Looking out towards the ocean, Pigram says: “We would wait for the big tides to go out and we’d just walk out and the pearl shell beds would be in abundance. We’d grab one – not hundreds of them, enough – and eat that day. It was the 1860s when white men discovered them, and you see the progression of the pearling industry is pretty much the movement of the coastline, and that was the exploitation of pearl shell.”
European interest in shells began at Shark Bay in 1850, intensifying on the Pilbara coast at Nickol Bay in 1861. It spread further north-east, and at Broome’s pearling peak 400 luggers worked the waters, destroying mangroves in the process. By the early 20th century Broome was the largest pearling centre in the world.
When Pigram talks of the early pearling industry, it was the harvest of Pinctada maxima shells, the same genus used from the mid-20th century to produce cultured South Sea pearls.
Broome is known for its mix of cultures – Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian and Malay – but not all were equal, and many were indentured. There was also Aboriginal slavery. Stories of pregnant pearl divers forced to dive are just one of many from this time.
‘Carbon is bound up within the shells’
As the industry developed and the cultural mix changed, pearl meat became a staple of those who worked on the luggers, and the wider community. “I was talking to these three old Malay men and they, the deckhands on the luggers, took control of the pearl meat and would on-sell it in town,” says Pigram. “So that was sort of their bonus. It was cheap. Then it became known, and that’s when the pearl masters started to control the pearl meat itself.”
The modern trade in pearl meat, prized in the Asian market, sees wholesale prices of $80 to $200 a kilogram. The product is used by chefs like Ben Shewry at Melbourne’s Attica. While pearls are still the main game for the likes of James Brown, the third generation to lead Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm at the tip of the Dampier Peninsula, pearl meat holds interest for both its history and its future value.
Brown likens the shelling days to a “gold rush”, one that led to a unique cuisine borne out of more than just pearl meat. “There’s this great old Broome cuisine but it hasn’t been tapped into yet,” he says. “There’s still some amazing dishes around, like one similar to the belacan prawn paste you have in South-east Asia, but it’s got the pearl guts and meat in it.” The adductor muscle is termed “pearl meat” while remaining soft tissue is “pearl guts”.
It’s not just Pinctada maxima that we’re seeing on menus and going to export. Pinctada fucata, known as akoya, are gaining traction. It’s the same species first used to develop the Mikimoto pearl culturing method, which kickstarted commercial pearl cultivation in Japan from the late-19th century. Brown has extended his interests in that product to New South Wales, taking a stake in Broken Bay Pearl Farm on the Hawkesbury River.
At Broken Bay hundreds of thousands of oysters don’t make the grade for pearl culturing, which is where the food market comes in. Following floods in March, operations have been set back but this integrated approach is, Brown believes, an important factor in viability.
Albany in Western Australia is Australia’s akoya powerhouse. Leeuwin Coast, part of Andrew Forrest’s Tattarang empire, intends to produce akoya in the millions, with no ambitions of pearl culturing. It has caused a stir with local fishers, amid concerns that aquaculture growth could restrict access to fishing grounds.
Almost a prerequisite for new entrants into the market for luxury ingredients is a clean, green story. Akoya require no inputs, unlike intensive fish farming, and achieved carbon-neutral status under the government’s “climate active” initiative. Justin Welsh, a marine biologist and Leeuwin Coast’s general manager of aquaculture, says lifecycle analysis of the akoya included emissions from third parties, fuel, processing materials, packaging and, ultimately, freight to the consumer.
“We have this wonderful product where carbon is actually bound up within the shells of the akoya themselves,” Welsh says. He describes this as a natural offset, though the main thrust of certification is in carbon-credit purchase.
“It’s definitely a beautiful expression of the ocean,” says Amy Hamilton, the Albany-based chef and owner of Liberte, a bar-come-restaurant with a national reputation. “You get all the qualities that you would enjoy in a rock oyster, but it has, to me, the texture of a mussel and in that way it can express itself really well through light cooking,” she says. Hamilton serves as a product ambassador, having used akoya prior to Leeuwin Coast’s acquisition of the leases.
Previously sold fresh (as Broken Bay still do), they were a hard sell in a crowded market, she says – and developing them in frozen form was a revelation.
Hamilton cures, sears, poaches and deep-fries them. “I don’t feel like I’m messing with the product or degrading it by doing that,” she says. “Any batter situation is good,” from tempura to a buttermilk fry, or “curing in lime juice”. With a near raw treatment, the acid tightens the akoya, making it “a little bit more accessible”.
While Hamilton says that education of diners is required, some chefs are still testing the waters. Brendan Pratt, the celebrated head chef at Vasse Felix winery in Margaret River, says: “We’ve used them randomly in snacks with the tasting menu. We cooked them in their own shells with XO sauce and just rested the shell on top of some coals.”
Texturally and taste-wise, he was happy, he says, but “it’s challenging for me to get my head around what it is, which is why I haven’t jumped behind it massively”. It’s less a criticism and more needing “time to work it out, showcasing it to its fullest potential”.
Back in Broome, the unique culture of eating pearl meat evolved with exactly that: time. Pigrim gestures from the mangroves towards the land. “Over there is a beautiful hill, littered with millions and millions of shells,” he says. “It was one of the most easily accessible food sources.”
At the Shinju Matsuri (“festival of the pearl”), local chefs compete in a pearl meat cook-off, applying modern dining sensibility to the ingredient. At Brown’s own pearl farm on the Dampier Peninsula, you can sit on the restaurant balcony looking out over the Indian Ocean. There, with the breeze rolling in, one can enjoy a simple noodle salad with an option of finely cubed pearl, lightly cured.
