Tahitian Black Pearls: Scarce and in High Demand
Tahitian Black Pearls: Scarce and in High Demand
Below the calm seas ringing the islands of French Polynesia like a vast mariculture (sea agriculture) industry, cultivators drop their lines into the sea and fish them out three years later for the harvest. The crop? Tahitian black pearls.
Black pearls are produced by a single species of mollusk, Pinctada margaritifera, known as the black-lipped oyster. It is native to the waters of a few Pacific countries, but only occur in large quantities around a few islands of French Polynesia besides Tahiti. No matter their origin, Polynesian black pearls are always called Tahitian.
Polynesian people have long prized Tahitian black pearls and incorporate them into their culture, stories, and mythology. They were thought to be gifts from the Gods because of their extreme rarity. A pearl diver might have found only a single black pearl for every 15,000 black-lipped oysters fished from the sea.
Before Europeans even knew where Tahiti was, they valued black pearls. The Russian crown jewels contained an especially exquisite black pearl necklace made for Catherine the Great.
By the mid 19th century, demand from Europes button industry had harvested many species of oyster almost to extinction, including the black-lipped oyster. Yet black pearls were as chic as ever. The intersection of high demand for pearls and a low supply of oysters meant stratospheric prices.
Cultured Tahitian Black Pearls
White pearls were not very cheap either, so in the 1890s, a Japanese businessman, entranced with the pearls he saw coming off of trading ships, decided to open a pearl farm. People in China had had occasional success culturing pearls for hundreds of years, and this businessman, after years of work, was able to make oysters grow pearls on an industrial scale. He patented a process by which an irritant is implanted into an oyster to trigger the production of pearl to coat the irritant.
It was not until 60 years later that pearl farmers had any large-scale success growing Tahitian black pearls from the black-lipped oyster. The process of inserting an irritant into the oyster was the same one long-used in Japan.
Though cultured Tahitian black pearls are not quite as dear as their natural counterparts, they are still quite rare. And these pearls, actually ranging in color from a sort of leaden gray to jet black, are so popular that they spawn imitators.
Some black pearls are actually white pearls dyed or irradiated to change their color. Jewelers can tell the difference by shining a UV light on the pearl in question.
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