Said Mr. Simpson in his report: “The women here play great havoc on the reefs by going out daily and collecting the pearl-oysters at low tide. All along the coast from Muliga Point to Arimba the shores are covered with shells. At one place we came across a heap of freshly-opened oysters which consisted of thirty or forty thousand at the lowest estimate; while an older heap contained between forty to sixty millions. Four women who were fishing on the reefs while we were there had over two thousand oysters in their baskets. Thus it is evident that immense quantities are annually destroyed. And the worst feature is that out of those destroyed, not one per cent. were over two years old.” It is the intention of the East African Pearl Company, as soon as the investigation of the resources is completed, to police the fishing grounds so as to put an end to the removal of immature oysters, which yield only seed-pearls, and to permit them to attain maturity. In addition to this, it is their purpose to utilize the extensive beds of oysters lying in comparatively deep water, which are now inaccessible to the natives owing to their lack of diving skill. Sir Robert Edgcumbe writes that it is impossible to say more at present than that these fisheries at one time bore a high repute, and that the oysters have continued to exist in multitudes though fished by the natives in the immature state; and there is every indication that if properly policed and worked in a scientific way these fisheries should once again become of much importance. The fact that the pearl-bearing oysters are found there in large quantities, notwithstanding that they have been poached without restriction by the natives, indicates that only proper management and policing are necessary to make them valuable and productive. On the lower coast of Portuguese East Africa, pearl fishing has been of some local importance. The reefs are most extensive about the Bazaruto Islands, previously referred to as about 150 miles south of Sofala. In 1888, when famine prevailed on this coast, the inhabitants of this archipelago, of both sexes and of all ages, fished for the large pearl-oysters (known locally as _mapalo_), selling their catch at Chiloane to Asiatic traders, who gave them a handful of rice for a large basket of the mollusks. It was estimated that during two months of that year, pearls to the value of eighty _contos_ ($83,500) were taken.[183] In 1889 three British subjects attempted to renew the fishery by using dredges, but without success, owing, it is said, to the great weight of the implements.