The Bay of Bengal’s oceanic histories have been indelibly shaped by the migrations and labour movements of South Asians across its waters and involved also the well-studied exchanges in tea, opium and textiles. Less well understood, however, is that its histories as a maritime zone were also influenced in no less important ways by robust marine goods economies that were underpinned by Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, British, American and Australian commercial interests. This paper explores the pearling economies and marine product trades of coastal Burma – including importantly those of the Mergui archipelago that were located in its southern reaches – as sites from which to trace complex oceanic linkages that braided together fluid geographies of extraction and distribution in South, Southeast and East Asia. Burma and the Mergui archipelago were thus constitutive of an expansive marine and ecological zone that ultimately also bound it to the global markets for pearls, shell and other marine goods in the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century.