Yeah, I turn the pearls into eye of enders.
Good news: I found where a stronghold would have been! Bad news: our imported chunk of land from the old server overlapped it, so the stronghold does not exist but the eye of ender will keep locking on that location. I found the EXACT spot where the portal spawn should be, but there is nothing there but open space now as I cleared out the entire area.
So, that eliminates 1 stronghold. I'm reading conflicting information on how many spawn in a world. I've heard that of one of the later 1.9RC's there can be an unlimited number that can spawn in a world. But others say it's still only 3 (as it was in the 1.8 update).
In order to find other strongholds, we are going to have to fan out beyond our imported land mass.
Mael, based off the map seed is there anyway you can tell what the stronghold numbers are? I know some sites keep a running list of map seeds that generate X or Y features. Didn't know if we used a particular seed, or if it was just random.