How are pearls cultivated?
I once met a guy who said he had cultivated pearls in a salt water aquarium. He said it was easy. Are there any websites where I can learn how this is done? And where can one buy live oysters?
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That would take awhile, for the pearl to get big.
The most important thing is to know have to keep up a salt water aquarium, it’s not that easy !
You need to insert a tiny bead or sand grain inside an oyster. And make sure you get it in far enough so it can’t get out. Then the oyster does the rest. I can’t find any websites offhand, but if you search pet stores (and a few beach shops!) you should be able to find at least a few oyster sellers. And if that’s impossible, other shellfish do make pearls that aren’t exactly as beautiful as the oyster’s, but still look stunning anyhow when put on a necklace. But make sure the bead (or whatever) stays in for long enough, and also be careful that it doesn’t attach to the shell, or otherwise you get a misshapen pearl.
A pear is actually a grain that got inside the oyster and is covered layer by layer by a calcareous secretion, the greater the time frame, the larger the pearl. Cultivation is simply placing a grain of sand inside a healthy oyster and let nature follow its path.
Pearls are technically “organic gems” produced naturally in the body of saltwater and freshwater mollusks such as oysters and mussels. Natural pearls take many years to develop. Their shapes are often irregular, from slightly off-spherical to bulging, twisting shapes known as baroque. In any shape, natural pearls are expensive and very rare. One might find a single natural pearl in every 10,000 oysters.
Sometimes a grain of sand, a parasite or other irritant gets inside the shell of a mollusk. When the animal senses this irritant, it covers the intruder with a coating of aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate, held in position by a cartilage-like material known as conchiolin. Together these form a semi-translucent crystalline material called “nacre.” Nacre (pronounced NAY-ker) builds up in layers like the rings of a tree. This buildup can continue for years. The result is a pearl. A pearl’s color and luster comes from the microscopic crystals of nacre refracting light.
Because of the scarcity of perfectly round, natural pearls, Kokichi Mikimoto developed a process of cultivating pearls around the beginning of the 20th century in Japan. Mikimoto found that if he delicately inserted a small bead of polished shell, the nucleus, into the mantle of a mollusk, and he correctly stimulated the animal, it would coat the bead with nacre, creating an almost perfectly round pearl. This process creates what we call a “cultured” pearl.
The longer the nucleus remains in the mollusk, the larger and more valuable the pearl becomes. Intensive husbandry over about 20 to 24 months will cultivate a saltwater pearl. It takes somewhat less time to cultivate freshwater pearls. Harvesting usually takes place during June and September.
Pearls are cultured around the world today, and different types of mollusks, especially oysters and mussels, raised in different environments, create cultured pearls with different colors, sizes and other qualities. Practically all pearls used in jewelry today are cultured pearls.
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