Known for their iridescent green-ish, gray-ish hues, black pearls are French Polynesia’s largest export. Often identified as Tahitian pearls, most of the pearls actually hail from the Gambier archipelago, where up to 90% of the population works in the pearl trade.
In the Gambiers, pearl farms are located in the protected waters to the leeward of many of the larger islands. Large arrays of shredded plastic are used to gather tiny Pinctada margaritifera oysters floating in the lagoon, which then grow in vertical nets strung between floating buoys.
When the oyster is mature, a small, polished bead of organic mollusk shell (in the Gambier, these beads are sourced exclusively from the lower Mississippi river system in the US, as this is believed to have the lowest rejection ratio and to make the best pearls) is gently inserted into the gonad of the oyster.
The oyster’s natural nacre generation then coats this bead over the course of a few years, and if all goes well the result is a perfectly round, shiny black pearl. If a particular oyster produces an exceptionally nice pearl, it may be seeded with a larger diameter bead next time, in the hopes of growing a larger, more valuable.
The work on a pearl farm is hard – individual oysters have to be individually cleaned to remove unwanted parasites from their shells, and the initial insertion of the seed an subsequent removal of the pearl requires a highly-skilled operator.
But the results are spectacular!
