For the last 12 years Peter Von Perle has done worldwide historic research about the early American pearl fisheries during the first half of the sixteenth century. Travelling around the world and talking to gemologists, historians, archaeologists and performing diverse laboratory tests on a cache of 500-year-old pearls has revealed the historic importance and influence that the pearl trade had during that time frame. It was those pearls that brought vast wealth to Europe and death and destruction to the local population and habitat.