In Queensland waters there are about 300 vessels, and on the Western Australian coast about 450 licensed craft engaged in the industry, the annual value of pearl-shell and pearls raised being nearly half a million sterling.
But the Torres Straits islanders are employed by Europeans in the pearl shell fishery, and are good labourers; and in some of the Kei and Aru Islands the Papuan inhabitants form orderly Christian communities.
European industries include gold mining, in which 500 miners, besides natives, are engaged (chiefly in the Louisiade Archipelago), and the beche de mer and pearl-shell fisheries, which were formerly more productive than at present.
The British islands are under a resident commissioner, and have some trade in copra, ivory, nuts, pearl shell and other produce.
The inhabitants, who number one to two hundred, speak Sokotri and Arabic and are chiefly engaged in diving for pearl shell on the Bacchus Bank N.E.
