How it’s done?

There are two versions, why the pearls begin to form: due to the sink of the mollusc, because the tiny parasite penetrates through the sash. But the essence is one: the mussel is protected from a foreign body and builds a kind of sarcophagus for him within himself, overlap over the layer overlap. So the pearl is formed.

Pearls are marine and freshwater, but the most valuable is the sea. The coast of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, Sri Lanka and Australia come across instances with the size of the sink to 30 cm in diameter.

Protection of pearl production for more than 4000 years. It’s heavy and dangerous. Cathes are immersed to a depth of 20 m, where there is a colony of mollusks. Minute-one and a half goes to collect shells. The ability to recognize pearls – deformation of sash, growths and t. D. – At the depth you do not apply, once. So for the guaranteed result you have to make 30-40 dives per day. Already in the boat sash open with a sharp knife. Approximately one instance of 30 turns out to be "with a filling". In one sink, usually detected from one to three pearls. Record set a mollusk since the coast of India since 87 pearls inside.

Large colonies of molluscs Pinctada Martensii have existed from the southern shores of Japan. AMA (Sea Man), as they called divers in Japan behind the pearls, until the middle of the twentieth century went to the depth without any special gear. And Women-Ama from Hekur Island, according to tradition, dived and not at all, having only a rope belt with a kaigan – tool, with which the oysters from the rocks ot. In a country where a woman traditionally depends on the spouse, AMA was a strange exception: they themselves contained a family and could choose her husband. Ama was a kind of closed caste, where the skills were inherited, and it was simply impossible to get back from.

The biggest pearl of Allah (or, according to Chinese legend, Pearl of Lao-Tzu), found in 1934, found in the Guinness Book of Ginnes), found in 1934. Its diameter is 23.8 cm, and weight – 6.37 kg. With its detection associated with a sad story. Once the residents of the local tribe found a loss of an 18-year-old ethema. During the next immersion for the pearl, he did not notice the revealed shell, reached for her. The sash of the giant slammed, tightly holding his hand. Filipinets never could free. The body had to lift on the surface with Mollusk. When the flaps were kept, they discovered a huge pearl, on the form resembling head in turbans (hence the name). In 1980, a unique find for $ 200,000 went to the Californian Jeweler Peter Hoffman, and he sold the pearl to a certain vitator Barbish from Colorado Springs, which to this day is its owner. Barbish told that he received a proposal from certain individuals from the Usama Ben Laden group to acquire a pearl for $ 60 million, but refused.

Now the pearl mining is put on the flow. After in 1900, the Japanese Cokalok Mikimoto patented his way of cultivating pearls, the jewels are grown on special farms. But first in the collected shells (forcing the shells to open) manually, with the help of a puncture, a foreign body is introduced to stimulate the extraction of pearl. Many mollusks after this operation die. The survivors "tolerate" pearls in sea bays, in suspended wire baskets or plastic cells. Pearls turns out, of course, natural, but cultivated, and it costs at least ten times less than so rarely now found wild pearls.

Today there are about 900 farms in the world where pearls are grown. More than 90% of the production of river pearls is in China. Following Japan, where about 200 tons of cultured marine pearls per year.