For centuries, the Gulf's pearl season ran through the summer months, when fleets of dhows sailed to the oyster banks with crews of divers, pullers, and captains. The trade supported entire coastal towns and connected the Gulf to markets in India and Europe through merchant networks based in Bahrain and Bombay.
The industry collapsed in the 1930s under pressure from Japanese cultured pearls and the Great Depression, and oil soon replaced it as the region's economic engine. Its memory is preserved today in museums, in Bahrain's UNESCO-listed pearling landscape, and in the vocabulary — words like dana — that still names hotels, schools, and shops across the Arab world.