The Ender Pearl is a new item in the 1.8 update and is sometimes dropped by endermen upon death. This item has no use yet. These pearls can be commonly found in bodies of water "naturally" as endermen will occasionally walk into water and die there from water damage.
Use
Ender pearls have no current use in 1.9.
Future Use
In future versions of Minecraft it will be possible to throw an ender pearl in order to teleport to its impact location.[1][2] However, teleporting with ender pearls will only work in survival and hardcore mode and will result in 5 falling damage.[2]
Bugs
On a 1.9 prerelease 2 server, using an ender pearl to teleport will result in being kicked from the server for "hacking". This is due to a check triggering that was supposed to prevent modified clients from moving too quickly.
