Keeping Account
Often, only a few pearls of any value would be found.
Captains kept them and negotiated their price: the divers could expect to receive only a small share of any profits.
Divers would also need an advance of money from a captain or a financier (mussaqam). If, by the end of the season, the diver had failed to work off that sum, the debt was carried over to the following year, or inherited by his sons.
From 1923, reforms forced captains to keep record of the pearls found.