Pearls

The earliest records of pearl production document pearl divers retrieving pearls off the seabed in the Persian Gulf.  Records going back to the 2^nd and 3^rd century BC document pearl production in the South China Sea.  In the 16^th century, Spaniards identified and harvested several significant pearl beds near the island of Margerita off the coast of Venezuela.  Prior to the 19th century, the pearls being harvested were natural pearls.  Divers would manually retrieve pearl oysters and mollusks.  Literally thousands of mollusks had to be collected and then destroyed in order of find a single pearl. 

The process of artificially inducing pearl development is called “periculture”.   This process was first developed in the early 20^th century in Australia, and then later spread to East and South East Asia.  Japan became a leading producer of cultured pearls.  However, industrial pollution and other environmental and fiscal conditions virtually wiped out Japan’s pearl farming industry.  Pearl production at Lake Biwa near Tokyo is a good illustration of this problem.  Since the early 1900s, Japanese pearl farmers had a flourishing production business in this ancient freshwater lake.  Production of cultured pearls hit its peak in the early 1970s, when annual production was on the order of 6 tons!  Pollution caused a steady decline in production until the industry was eventually wiped out.  The Japanese tried to restart production in other lakes in the country using different mollusk species, but success if any, has been short-lived.

To make up for this loss of the Japanese pearl production industry, the Japanese invested in developing pearl farms near Shanghai.  This caused the pearl production industry in China to boom.  China today is the world’s largest producer of freshwater pearls, with production in excess of 1500 tons per year.  Japan has been relegated to the role of pearl processor in the industry.  In many cases, Japan’s involvement is limited to sorting, matching, and labeling of Chinese freshwater pearls.