Manihi, 7-17-2017--Pearl farm

By David

We had a great pearl farm tour on Monday. Our hosts Angele and Kahutia were very hospitable and even fed us lunch.

If there was one thing we learned in the course of the day, it was that pearl farming is far more complex than we'd realized and is incredibly detail oriented. It's also global, in that the nuclei (more about that below), are grown in Mississippi and the primary markets for black pearls are China and Japan.

Our tour began at 6am when a boat picked us up, along with two of the employees, on the village side of the pass. It's all a family run business, so the two employees were also family members. They dropped us off across the pass, then took the boat across the lagoon to the pearl farm where they picked up the oysters that would be grafted later in the day.

Those of us who were dropped off piled into an old Land Rover for the 3 mile trip up the motu to the pearl farm.

Manihi was the first atoll in which pearls were farmed. It then spread quickly throughout the Tuamotus. The high profit margin caused the business to grow rapidly until the market was saturated, at which point prices fell and many of the pearl farmers went out of business. Pearl farming is now more stable. The lagoon ecosystem here at Manihi, which was failing under the nutrient consumption of all the oysters, is now recovering.

The farm we visited is considered small. They lease 40 hectares (90 acres) of the lagoon for about $5000 per year.

As usual, we'll let the pictures and captions tell the story.

Looking seaward from the road on the motu to the pearl farm.  There's very little surf because this is on the leeward side of the atoll.

This is the processing center for the pearl farm.  It's purposely shack-like so it can be rebuilt in case storms destroy it.

Angele holds a collector which is a desirable habitat for baby oysters that occur naturally in the lagoon. 

The employees return to the processing station with ropes on which oysters have grown for the past 18 months. Each rope is about 5' long and is inside a mesh bag for protection from predators.  Each rope has about 100 oysters growing on it.  18 months ago, these oysters were taken from the collectors and attached to the rope with a piece of thin nylon cord.
The bags are suspended from buoys at about 15 meters below the surface where the water is colder and more nutrient rich.  

During the grafting season, 15 mesh tubes are gathered per day from the lagoon.  Of the 1500 oysters, about 1000 are large enough to receive a graft.  There are two grafters, each doing about 500 grafts per day.    

Rope of oysters after removal from a mesh tube.  

One person cuts the oysters off the rope and grades them according to size.  The other person cleans marine growth off each oyster.
Oysters that are too small are put back on a nursery rope to continue growing.

The cleaned oysters are then pried open and a wedge is inserted to hold the oyster open for grafting.  The opening process must be done carefully or the oyster will die.  

A tray of oysters ready for grafting.

Several oysters are selected from each batch and inspected for the color of the shell inside.  More colorful shells will produce more valuable pearls.  The instrument in Angele's right hand is a mirror that allows her to check the shell coloration.

The most colorful shells are cut in half to cut out the greffon, which is the part of the oyster that will produce a pearl.

A closeup of an oyster with desirable color.

The greffon is cut from the oyster.

The greffon is then placed on a damp cloth where an unnecessary part is cut off...

...and laid on a cutting board for the next step.

The lighter colored part is carefully cut off to make the final greffon.

The strips of greffon are then cut up into tiny pieces about 2-3 millimeters across.

The grafting table.  At the top are bags of nuclei of various sizes.  The nuclei are made of shell and produced in Mississippi. Each nucleus is coated with a yellow antibiotic.   

Angele puts an oyster in a clamp, then carefully opens the "pocket" inside the oyster. 

She then selects a nucleus appropriately sized for the pocket of that oyster.

She then picks up a tiny piece of greffon...

...and with surgical precision places it in the correct orientation on the side of the nucleus. The greffon will stimulate the oyster to lay down layers shell on the nucleus to form the pearl.  Any mistake at this stage won't be detected for 18 months, so the utmost care and skill are needed to ensure a high rate of success.  Even so, only about 50% of the oysters will produce viable pearls.
Each of the two grafters keeps records of how many grafts they do each day and of what size.   

Angele at her grafting station.  A window is strategically placed right behind her on the north side of the building so she has the best possible lighting.

After grafting, the wedge is removed and each oyster is drilled to allow a thin nylon cord to pass through it.  Two oysters are attached to each cord.

The pairs of oysters are then tied to a knotted rope.  Each grafter has their own cord color to further keep track of their success rate, though this won't be known for another 18 months.

If all goes well, this will be the final result.

We take a break and walk across the moonscape of the hoa toward the sea.  The how is covered with pieces of coral that wash ashore during storms.

Pearl finds a hermit crab.

We also take a walk to the next motu where a "luxury hotel" lies in disuse.  This is one of many upscale hotels that have closed since the economic downturn of 2008.  We're told  that tourism has been on the decline in French Polynesia for the past decade.