Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in an account of his travels through the Pacific in 1888 and 1889, "the natives themselves have often scraped up a little English,.. or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward 'Beach-la-Mar'."'
Today, the word "bislama" itself is seldom used by younger speakers of Bislama to refer to sea slugs, as a new re-borrowing from pseudo-French "bêche de mer", which has taken the form "besdemea", has become more popular [REF].