From
Tuomotos
The Tahitian black pearl isn't made in Tahiti but rather in the Tuomoto, or at least most of them anyway. The atolls are good growing grounds for pearls. Fakarava has a few pearl farms, some of which you can tour. A couple of days ago, a group of us got together and toured the Hinano Pearl Farm. Hinano is the Polynesian word for a flower and also for a famous girl. Many women have been named after her, including the pearl farmer's wife. It's also the name of Tahiti's local beer.
Here's what I learned about pearl farming in the Tuomoto: Pearl farm water acreage is managed by the French government but you have to own land first for the permitting. A few years ago, I guess some pearl farmers mismanaged money that was loaned to them for their farms and bought things like large SUV's without the profit margin needed to pay their bills. They ended up having to "dump" their pearls on the market in order to pay bills which caused the price of pearls to fall for everyone. Years later, the price still hasn't recovered, many pearl farmers are out of business and farms such as Hinano have decreased production significantly. Hinano pearls used to have 4 pearl seeders working full time but now he only employs one. It takes 18 months to make a pearl after it's been seeded and several years to really get rolling so there is quite a time commitment before real profits can be made.
The oysters used for grafting and seeding the pearls are grown locally in the Tuomotos. The actual seed that becomes the nucleus of the pearl is made in the USA from somewhere along the Mississippi- a fresh water mussel grows the shell that the seeds are molded from. They are made in several sizes because once you remove a pearl from an oyster, you can place a new seed of the same size right back in and the oyster will make another pearl that will be bigger than the last. You can do this up to 4 times before the oyster becomes too old. The more colorful the inside of the oyster shell (perhaps greens & blues and some pinks like the colors of an oil slick) the more colorful the pearl will be. It is the refraction of light that you see as the color of the pearl. In different light, the color will be different. The certified thickness of a Tahitian pearl (the "candy coating" on the seed) must be 0.8mm minimum while for Japan it is 0.4 according to the pearl farmer. A certified Tahitian pearl has been x-rayed to insure there is a seed for a nucleus and that the shell thickness is at least .8mm.
So the oysters are purchased in sacks locally, the seeds from the USA in bags of different sizes, then the oysters are pried open slightly to look at the colors inside. If the colors are good, they open the oyster all the way, kill it, then take the mantle which is what makes the mother of pearl- the shell. Then they cut this in strips to use for grafting. They take a piece of the colorful mantle, pry open another oyster and slip this and the seed into a pocket that they make in the new oyster. It will take about 6 weeks to heal up and incorporate this new graft before it starts making mother of pearl to form a pearl. A small hole is drilled into the corner of the shell and it's tied onto a rack which then closes over the oyster. The grafted oysters are then lowered into the water on the racks and nets suspended from buoys maintain a depth of I think it was 8-10 meters. The depth is important so that the oysters can feed on the algae they like to eat but be deep enough to not be subject to waves from storms etc. since these can damage or even lose the whole oyster. The racks protect the oysters from predators.
After 18 months, the pearls can be harvested. They haul the nets up, bring the oysters into the shed, and each shell is gently pried open to slip the pearl out and reseed it with another. The pearls are then graded by color, size, clarity, imperfections or originality of shape. The grades are grade A, B, C, etc and it goes by percentage of perfectness. There is a lot that they don't know about how a pearl is actually formed - they don't know what they've got until they harvest it except that when you place the graft, it is important to make sure not to introduce sand or other debris into the pocket since that's one of the ways to get imperfections. When we watched the seeding process, the guy was continually dipping his tools into water to free any sand. The old oyster shells can be polished & used for jewelry, hung up for decoration and we've seen many used in decorations and backgrounds for statues, etc in the local churches.
I asked what a pearl diver was and the owner of the pearl farm said that in Japan, divers go down collecting shells for buttons, not for pearls and that about one in 1500 oysters contains a natural pearl. He said that the term pearl diver wasn't really accurate but then that is just what he told me. I'd like to know more about this.
So, that was what we learned about Tahitian pearl farming. We have questions now about how US pearls are made- like a string you may find in Macy's, all perfect, real white pearls. Hinano had a little showroom and Jon let me pick out a belated birthday present of the deep green Tahitian pearls that I think are so beautiful. We both decided to forgo getting a tattoo, which is very popular here. It just didn't seem to fit us.
Now that we've gotten our pearls, we're focusing on scuba diving which is what we're really here to do. Today we did our first scuba dive of the trip through the south pass at Fakarava atoll. It was great, but brisk near the end with the current. Tomorrow we plan to go again except this time bring the camera. There were loads of fish and probably about 25 sharks although they were all minding their own business and they looked like regulars in the pass. We also saw a few napoleon wrasses which are MASSIVE fish- one was about 6 feet long. They are a crazy blue/green color and not afraid of your approach. I hope we see them again tomorrow.
Last night was a rough night in the anchorage. For whatever reason, the wind picked up at 3am to about 30kts and turned NE so we became exposed to the open fetch of the lagoon. It is very uncomfortable to be bucking & broncing listening to your anchor chain rub & catch on rocks. One boat snapped their snubber line like we did in Ua Pou. So today we moved the boat in good light over to a magnificent spot behind a shallow, colorful reef with perfect islets around us. The water is much prettier and only 20ft instead of 50, so we're much happier. It took forever to get the anchor up and Jon had to be in the water watching the anchor chain telling me which way to motor to free it up. A fellow cruiser was on our bow managing the windlass. Anchorages here don't have sand, it is mostly coral. There's just no free spots. Our chain is taking a beating! The weather forecasting in these areas is of course practically nonexistent. We're too far from anywhere for anyone to care. So we get GRIB files from the US but they're based on data that is plugged into a computer model but not interpreted by a meteorologist so they are pretty inaccurate. Definitely better than nothing though. In general, we've had great weather, could use some rain but sun is good too! Hopefully last night will continue to be unusual.
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