Is It A Monster?

Son-In-Law takes his sport seriously. I'm not talking about that crap on telly, I mean the Real Thing: Participation; Life Or Death; Them Or Me. [That's Enough Capitalisation. Ed.]

He has it all planned out like a full-scale military operation. Firstly he'll check out the tide tables, to find the most suitable time to ship out; then the weather forecasts, to see if his quarry will likely be easy or hard to spot. He'll even make sure every member of the party has an up-to-date hunting licence. On the night before the big event, he'll pack up the essentials into the 4x4 ready for an early start.

Come the big day, he'll be up before dawn, getting the rest of the family prepared, for this is more than a one-man operation. They all pile aboard and hurtle off along the long, dusty highway, passing jacaranda trees bursting with purple [Get on with it. Ed].

He grabs a string bag in one hand, a trusty screwdriver in the other and stomps off down the beach, arriving at the rocky outcrop just as the tide reaches its lowest ebb. Or is it flow? [No. Ebb.]

This far out, the critters have had time to mature and grow into monsters three, sometimes four inches across. Expertly, he reaches far down to the underside of a rock, feels around until his fingers find his prey, then he ducks under the water with the screwdriver, struggles valiantly with one of these leviathans for two, three, maybe five seconds and finally surfaces with, well, what looks like a bit of rock, defiantly thrust aloft. Into the bag it goes and he's off looking for the next one already.
He'll only stop when either the rising tide makes it too hard to stay upright, or he's reached his quota. Well, I say his quota, but that's where the rest of the family come in. 24 oysters per person per day. They just have to physically present, with licences. Sometimes we get to join in. Sometimes we just buy the licences and watch.

Then it's off with the day's catch a l'hotel, where chef washes and opens the oysters and serves them up with lemons and piri-piri sauce. Anything to disguise the taste of snot, really.
So there we are, eating the little fuckers with various shades of enthusiasm, when Mrs Farty exclaims, "This one's not been cleaned properly, there's a bit of grit or something in it!"
But lo and behold! On closer inspection, the "or something" turns out to be a real, honest-to-goodness pearl. Ain't it a beauty?

Er, you might want to click to enlarge. Several times.