The Tahitian Pearl

nearly a half century after Kokichi Mikimoto first began culturing small white Akoya pearls in Japan a Frenchman by the name of Jean Marie Delmar began the first pearl culture project on the at all if he Coweta in French Polynesia the pearls he produced two years later well unlike any the world had ever seen large exotic black green aubergine colors that were completely natural these pearls were soon to become known worldwide as Tahitian pearls Teesha pearls are now one of the most important exports of French Polynesia we're now at the cultured pearl farm of mr. Paul you one of the largest and most successful Tahitian pearl farmers in French Polynesia and the winner of four different quality Excellence Awards he's allowed us unfettered access to his entire operation including the grafting the grout and even the harvest I'm Jeremy Shepherd and this is the T Chinook a tolls are the preferred locations for Tahitian pearl farms an atoll is the leftover remnants of a sunken volcano which then becomes a coral island that encircles a lagoon either partially or completely the atoll of Tokoroa is nearly 600 kilometres from the main island of Tahiti and is only easily accessible by small aircraft the remote nature of this atoll means that pearl farmers not only work here but they live here and create their own communities technicians and workers on the farm live in modest accommodations right on the water what the atoll doesn't provide naturally must be flown in which can be very expensive so local resources are used to their best potential fish are caught and rainwater is collected so Chris Carr says if you kept those Kat off-screen propose our case Kanaka first graph first go what we've got here is almost like a pearl harvesting assembly-line when the shells are brought in from the water they're first opened slightly with a peg inserted to just keep the shell slightly open the next step is opening the shells completely the top part of the shell is taken off leaving the bottom portion of the shelf part with the most still inside so once the tops been taken off the shells then go to mr. you mister you personally harvests the second graft pearls here once the pearls have been harvested the next step is to take the actual mollusk out of the shell you can see this meaty portion here this is used for fish food and fertilizer everything's used once the PD portions been removed the last thing you're left with is what's known as the a doctor mussel this is a delicacy in fact a lot of the guys here eat this straight out of the shell with lemon a little bit of lime maybe some salt and Tabasco sauce once the adductor muscles been removed from the shell you're left with beautiful mother of pearl mother pearl is sold the adductor muscle is eaten every part of the shell is used mr. Yu is personally handling the harvest of the second draft this is the most important harvest on the farm this is when the pearls are the largest and the most valuable but even after all these years the years of spat grow out the years in the water the first and the second graph you never really know what you're going to get some of these pearls are magnificent other pearls not so much but the beauty of some of these pearls far outweighs some of these little accidents that we see in here there's such a variety in the Tahitian pearl I mean this is a huge baroque pearl this looks like a South Sea pearl from Australia it's got to be at least 16 millimeters by about 20 magnificent baroque pearl it's such a rare color too you've got the darks you've got peacocks you've got blues fresh out of the shell a silver blue beautiful again I'm always impressed by his farm how many round pearls he creates we just shell after shell after shell the pearls are round so few circle pearls so few baroque pearls just round round round the least valuable of all the pearls produced on the farm are gonna be the circle pearls now circle pearls are beautiful in their own right and they still can sell for a lot of money but a round pearl versus a circle pearl he wants the rounds let's see what we got here it is pearl inside the gonad let's pop it out of there and it's pretty amazing what we're witnessing here is an integral part of the Perl culturing process this is known as the mantle selection otherwise known as the Sipos selection what the technician is doing is cutting a small piece of mantle tissue from a donor Mullis this mantle tissue is then trimmed and sliced into very small squares just a couple of millimeters in diameter you can see these colors we've got the greens the purples the dark colorations these are the colors they're looking for in Tahitian pearls now the reason these pieces of mantle tissue are so important because these pieces contain something known as the epithelial cells epithelial cells are the cells responsible for growing nacre so without these pieces of mantle tissue a pearl would never form inside the gonad from here the mantle tissue is going over to the grafters in just a minute we'll actually see the mantle tissue go inside the shell along with the beads the most important and the most difficult part of the entire pearl culturing process is known as the first graph what this technician is doing is taking a slightly open shell she cleans it out just a little bit so that she could see the gonad she checks the health of the gonad the size the Gonet and it makes a small incision into the side of it in this incision she's inserting a small nucleus this nucleus is going to be followed by a piece of mantle tissue once the mantle tissue has been inserted the shell can be tied back to the shop place put into the water for a year and a half to two years a flawless operation so what we're witnessing here is something somewhat unique in Tahitian and South Sea pearl culture and that is known as second graft the technician is removing the pearl from the first graph when he pulls the pearl out of the shell he does a quick examination to see if the pearls ground and of high-quality if it's not a high-quality pearl he doesn't continue with a second graph if it's a round pearl what he'll do is he'll choose a nucleus approximately the same size of the pearl that he just harvested and reinsert that nucleus into the Pearl sack at this stage of the grafting process a new piece of mantle tissue isn't needed the Pearl sack already exists he shouldn't get a pearl I'd say maybe another three to four millimeters larger than the one he's harvesting today after it's been regretted the shell was back on the shaft lace and back into the water for another 18 to 24 months that time when the pearls harvested we're going to have a larger pearl but probably with a little bit less luster because the shell is a bit older by now that's the entire culturing process it may look easy it may look quick but this technician has years of experience because one slight misstep one slice in the wrong place anything could damage this don't add anything to damage the mollusk and the shell could die as with any pearl farm experienced local divers tend to the grafted shells in the water these locals freedive for the most part without the use of scuba tanks or wetsuits I decided to get in myself with a full tank of air of course to see the shells hanging from the Chevrolets and to see the divers at work after a brief lunch of local fare at the farm it's time to head back to the airport and onto papaya de Tahiti where we will be visiting La Maison de Appel to get a real understanding of how the French Polynesian government works hand-in-hand with the producers to promote the d--ation pearl what's that station pearls apart is that pearls are controlled by the government in other words before they can be exported the quality the nacre has to be checked and okay by the government before pearls can legally be exported out of the country here at the pearl Department the pearls are x-rayed and visually inspected pearls come in by the trunk load all these pearls here are being prepared for an upcoming auction but before they can be sold they've got to first be inspected the first test of the pearls prior to export is the visual inspection the pearls are being examined for maker quality and surface purity if the pearls don't pass this test they've got to be destroyed we're now in the grading room amidst all Dell apparel what we're seeing is a relatively new program designed to protect asian pearl producers the pearls are being graded for size luster color and surface purity once the pearl has been graded the particularly is assigned a value this value can be used by the producer as a baseline to determine what he should sell his production for the final examination of the pearls must go through before they can be legally exported is the x-ray inspection this technician beside me is checking each individual pearl to make sure that the nacre thickness is a minimum of 0.8 millimeters if the pearls pass this final inspection they're legally available for sale and export if they don't pass this final inspection again the pearls have to be destroyed this is cellblock D for pearls otherwise known as death row these pearls did not pass the inspections it may have been an acre thickness issue it may have been a surface issue but these are the pearls that are all going to be destroyed mizzle mcdonnen i've been created in 2009 it is a part of the reform engaged by the French government of french polynesia our mission is to expertise the pearls the pearls of the producer help them to commercialize the pearls so we can organize auctions or to help the producer tool to sell the pearls especially in Tahiti we want to bring back the auctions in Tahiti the other mission is to protect the Tahitian pearl and also to promote the Tahitian culture world in Tahiti but also abroad hello my name is lakeya I'm the general manager of the company for Black Pearl we are who seller in Tahiti and we are buying a complete harvest from the different island and prepare to our customer in the world so I'm in the office with Luigi art from boy black pearl he's a pearl exporter he's got clients all over the world and this is sort of the final step teaching pearls go through before they make it to the world market week nice to meet you nice to meet you so tell me what's going on here you were briefly explaining this is a new harvest so what are the first steps the first steps is a we we did with the producer person of course we need to buy its firm and to agree on the price right when we agree on the price we clean the pearl and we are doing the assaulting on the shape so this is this the first assortment yes the very first assortment I see so first is the shape round some your own your own sameba workshop sameba hawk long circle and baroque of course we are also taking out the low quality right right after we did the shape we are doing the quality a top quality equality equality CD gotcha and so after the pros have been separated where do they go do you have a vault or yes we have a vault over there and we pull the Pearl you want me to yeah please please let's go see it alright so this is it um let me see the ball let's go so wow that is a lot of pearl yes amazing amazing so how many girls do you think are in here we have around 800,000 per that's got to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 necklaces the good question I don't know about 40 pieces but I have 40 pieces per necklace so it's it's a lot of pearls oh my goodness I don't think I've ever seen this meditation pearls in one spot why do you have to keep so many I mean the turnover it must take a while to sell this many pearls so so why eight hundred thousand so we need the big the big quantity of felt because too long certain the different order from our customer in the world sure we need a very big quantity for example we have some customer that one round shape top quality pearl blue per nine millimeter to get this pearl we need to buy many others and you get they won't wake up a 1000 pair of this shape and call it right so we need to get a lot of pearl to get the color the shape and the brim of the dangle and so that explains why you've got each one of these boxes in here tagged with medium dark semi around ABCD some of them are mixed some of them are completely separated you guys drop pearls circle pearls baroque pearls even KC pearls yes lovely and even mob a pearls Mike snap now this is a lot of kg per all students beautification cause yes each box is a shape quality color and size shake quality color and size yes so for example we have here semi-round a be medium de two thousand nine hundred eighty two pc you know exactly how many pearls are in each box either weight and the size living for fourteen millimeter so when some buyer asking me some specific order is very fast to find the shape de colo and everything and you immediately know whether or not you have the purlins image work exactly you don't have to sort out well this is really amazing but i want to see some strands is movable so this is italy this is the final culmination of all these girls we've got strands some of these strands by the way are just amazing a natural chocolate color tesha strands the greens you've got Silver's you never saw some white white Tahitian pearls that's a very we don't think credibly rare yeah Teesha pearls aren't supposed to be white you can still call this a black pearl even though it's white yeah yeah this is this is boy black pearl company this is a white strand Wow it's amazing this is what you can create when you have eight hundred thousand pearls and evolve yes it's very important to have a big quantity of pearl when you want too much in one color or one shape one quality always the same problem to get the new shape and do the same colors and the same colors like this for example an 18 millimeter strand well it culminates at 18 millimeters is about 15 to 18 million years if it's all the same color this is a huge strand of pearls yes rarely see something this large it's amazing well the week this has been fascinating I thank you very much and I wish you the best of luck thank you a man hopes talk to you soon after Tahitian pearls have been drilled they can be used to create amazing pieces of jewelry the tremendous color variation found exclusively in to Asian pearls can be used to complement a wide range of different gemstones and metals producing truly unique wearable pieces of art after nearly two weeks on the road followed by a ten-hour flight from papaya dip back to Los Angeles it's such a relief to get back to my offices where I can pass off the pearls to my staff so they can be photographed graded and uploaded to the Internet and I can sit back and relax and get ready for the next trip which is taking me to the Philippines in search of golden South Sea pearls you you

Channel: Pearl Paradise

Views: 601,221

Keywords: tahitian pearls, tahiti, black pearls, pearl farm, pearl farming, Tahitian Pearl, Pearl (Material)

Id: mKTLiWhdhxc

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2013