Cultured Pearl Industry Grows

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30190, 23 July 1963, Page 20

Cultured Pearl Industry Grows

fßv a Reuter Correspondent)

MELBOURNE. Pearl* as big as grapes are being cultivated in the warm waters around northern Australia where once fleets of luggers operated with divers risking, and often accepting death to glean the natural pearls. When the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh visited Broome, on the north coast of West Australia they were shown a display of pearls. One pearl had a diameter of 16.4 mm. It was the biggest pearl seen in Broome tor a long time and it was produced at the Kuri Bay cultured pearl “farm’’ about 250 miles north ■of Broome.

Kuri Bay started operation in 1956. It was the first pearl farm in Australia, and was established by a commercial firm with help from Japanese pearl 'culture companies.

Although the pearl cultivation industry in Australia is so young, it is flourishing and rapidly expanding. At present there are at least six pearl farms operating. Except for the Kuri Bay venture, they are all in the Torres Strait, between Australia and New Guinea. Patience And Money

Three other companies hope to establish pearl farms in the Torres Strait area this year, but it will require a lot of patience and a lot of money, for them to thrive.

All the Australian companies producing cultured pearls work in co-operation with Japanese companies.

which have been cultivating pearls for many years and have the business down to a fine art.

The Japanese companies provide skilled workers without which the Australian venture, would probably collapse. Japanese and Australian cultured pearls do not clash on the market, because the Australian ones are much bigger and bring in a higher price.

Japanese pearls go up to about 10 mm in diameter and Australian pearls start from there and go up to about 16 mm.

The Kuri Bay company scoured the whole north-west Australian coast before they decided on their site. The company’s chairman, Mr Keith Dureau, says of the search:

“It was very difficult because so many factors were involved. We had to have sheltered water, with a good current and a temperature of around 30-degrees centigrade for the oysters. “Then we had to be sure the location was satisfactory from a human point of view. Kuri Bay looked suitable for the oysters and it also had a fresh water supply, so it was suitable for the people." he said. There was also the availability of oysters to consider. At Kuri Bay, oysters have to be brought up to 500 miles in specially equipped luggers that fish them from the sea bed, but at the Torres

Strait farms, oyster, are ready to hand. When the oysters arrive at a pearl farm, every one of them has to be “seeded” by hand. Japanese workers, with many years of training clamp open the oysters, cut a small piece out of their mantles, and insert the “seed,” usually a tiny piece of Mississippi river fresh water clam shell, or pearl shell. This is used because it is difficult for the oysters to eject. The oysters are then placed in wire baskets suspended from anchored rafts and left for between two and three years. The tiny piece of shell put into the oyster irritates it and it ejects a fluid called nacre, which hardens round the seed.

The oyster continues to eject more and more nacre, in an attempt to smooth the foreign particle. It grows bigger end bigger and that is the prized pearl. “Of the 200,000 or so oysters we have had at Kuri Bay, about 30 per cent, have produced some kind of pearl,” Mr Dureau says. “The most popular pearls are white or rosae (rose tinted) but we get them in many colours, gold, yellow, green, blue and in many shapes and sizes."

The pearl the Queen saw was valued at about £3OOO. “If it had been a natural pearl it would have had four or five times that value, although even experts cannot tell the difference between natural and cultured pearls without the aid of x-rays,”

Mr Dureau says. Few natural pearls are found today, according to Mr Dureau. Most of the pearlshell fishers are working for pearl farms and they get oysters from areas where pearls are uncommon.