There's another reason why cultured pearls are less expensive than the wild
ones, and Tina showed it in one of her photos: The companies who farm cultured
pearls don't put grains of sand in the oyster. They put the equivalent of a
boulder in there. That way the oyster only has to build up a few layers, rather
than layer after layer after layer, over several year's time.
Thanks,
Steve Goss
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus [mailto:olympus-bounces+sgoss=cerner.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2014 8:06 AM
To: Olympus group posting
Subject: Re: [OM] IMGS: Harvesting Baby Oysters
Tina wondered if perhaps nobody here is interested in pearl oysters.
Well, speaking for myself, I *did* find it interesting, especially as I had
never seen the process illustrated before. But I doubt that all and sundry are
interested in knowing what I think !! A pity the Olympus pages don't have a
*like* facility such as fuzzbook has :-)
As to
their cost; these cultured pearls are really cheap, compared with the wild
ones.
Pearls in molluscs arise though the animals protecting themselves from the
irritation of a foreign body which has somehow got into the space between the
two shell halves and which really bother the animal. They have no means to
eject the foreign body. But what they do, is to coat the *thing* with a
covering of the same nacreous substance that their shell is made from, and all
is soft and smooth again. Or vice versa.
*Wild* pearls as found in the Torres Strait decades ago, were discovered
through the harvesting of millions of oysters from the sea floor by divers
hired cheaply, each one opened manually and searched for the rare animal into
which a grain of sea-sand had found its way. The shells and meat of all were
discarded and only the pearls retained.
The cultured variety that Tina observed are each having an annoying grain or
two of sand inserted for the animal to coat with nacre..
Imagine having a grain of sand under your eyelid, with NO possibility of
removing it.
EVERY oyster yields one or more. Cheep cheep !!
Brian
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