A pleasure dive turned into a pearler for two men from the NSW South Coast on Saturday, when an abalone delivered more than a meal.

Preparing to eat their haul, Stevie McDougall and his neighbour were shocked to find first one, then two tiny pearls, in one shell.

“We were sitting out the back of my mate’s house having a few beers and cleaning the abalone,” Mr McDougall said.

“He put the knife inside, went to cut it and the first pearl popped out onto his fingernail. We thought, ‘wow, is that what we think it is?’ 

“After a bit more exploration, we found another one. We were in shock.”

Mr McDougall’s daughter, Sarah, 15, had accompanied the pair on the dive and her father’s yell brought her running.

“She jumped the fence,” he said.

“We all just stood and stared and went, ‘wow’.”

Not sure of the value of their find, they abandoned dinner for the internet.

“That is when we realised how rare they were,” Mr McDougall said.

“Only one in every 100,000 abalone will produce a pearl and only one in every 100,000 pearls will be symmetrical. Usually, they are chips or lumpy, but these two are just about circles. That is when we really became interested.”

Mr McDougall said his research revealed an abalone pearl of similar size had sold for $45,000.

“That one was about the size of a grain of rice and these ones are similar,” Mr McDougall said. 

He’s closing a shell on his excitement for the moment.

“They could be worth nothing, or they could be worth a lot of money,” he said.

However, if the friends do manage to sell their pearls, the automotive engineer at Moruya’s Ultimate Campers has a short, pragmatic wish list.

“I just want to get my driveway concreted,” he said.

Since moving to Batemans Bay two years ago, Mr McDougall has dived for abalone roughly once a fortnight in summer and less often in winter.

“To find something like this, I am pretty stoked,” he said.

“There are guys who do this every day and have never seen one, so I consider myself fortunate. 

“We are both licensed and we stick to our bag limits. We get our two every time, so to bring four home and to find the pearls was amazing.”

Neither friend is prepared to reveal the location of their now favourite abalone patch, fearing a run on the scarce stocks.

“Let’s just say it was one of our favourite spots on the South Coast,” Mr McDougall said.