As Queensland's colonial decades progressed the Reef was also developing into a region of marine industries, based chiefly on four products: bêche-de-mer, tortoiseshell, turtles and pearling. All found a ready market in Asia: bêche-de-mer for Chinese cuisine, green turtles for meat and soup, tortoiseshell and pearling for overseas manufacture in the luxury jewellery trade. For over a century the dominant ethos was that of the open frontier of an unlimited resource potential, simply there for the taking, a process designated as ‘resource raiding’ (Ganter 1994). So, as cabinet collectors became obsolete and natural history evolved into science, one major concern became directed towards discovering and exploiting economic products to sustain the increasing numbers of settlers who moved along the Reef coastline. That process, however, was slow to develop since in Reef waters there was, at first, no understanding of limited resources. The abundance of the marine environment was taken for granted, even though the dangers of such practices were already evident in the almost extinct sandalwood trade. Only when resources were close to extinction was scientific inquiry brought to bear.

One of the early European exploitative activities in tropical Pacific waters, along with the extensive spice trade in the Dutch East Indies, was the logging of sandalwood that had a ready market in China, where various species – red sandalwood (Santalum album) being the most prized – were used for building temples, houses and reliquaries.