The pearl fishery of Ceylon was a lucrative source of pearls as well as a theatre of colonial power. But instead of narrating a story of abstracted governmentality, this paper dives below the waves, braiding Tamil poetry with scientific material relating to the oyster and state sources concerning fishery administration. Taken together, these unearth a multi-species history of the human relationship to the seas. In the same way that pearl divers’ labour was a mode of knowing nature, so too, natural processes and marine creatures shaped, in turn, the economic, social and cultural worlds at the fishery. This nacreous, layered approach combines natural history, maritime labour and historical ecology to explore the fragile and interlocking balance below the waves which extended beyond humans to the molluscs, sharks, boring sponges and parasitic tapeworms of the Gulf of Mannar. The archive around the pearl fishery advances the animal and ecological histories of the Indian Ocean and also points towards ways of suturing the gulf between Indian and Sri Lankan scholarship.

中文翻译：

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像大海一样看：1800-1925 年锡兰珍珠渔业的多物种历史

锡兰的珍珠渔业是利润丰厚的珍珠来源，也是殖民权力的舞台。但本文并没有叙述一个抽象的治理故事，而是潜入海浪之下，将泰米尔诗歌与与牡蛎有关的科学材料和有关渔业管理的国家资料编织在一起。总之，这些揭示了人类与海洋关系的多物种历史。正如采珠者的劳动是一种了解自然的方式一样，自然过程和海洋生物也反过来塑造了渔业的经济、社会和文化世界。这种珠光宝气、层次分明的方法结合了自然历史、海上劳动和历史生态学，以探索海浪下方脆弱而相互关联的平衡，这种平衡超越了人类，延伸到了软体动物、鲨鱼、马纳尔湾的无聊海绵和寄生绦虫。围绕珍珠渔业的档案推进了印度洋的动物和生态历史，并指出了缝合印度和斯里兰卡学术鸿沟的方法。