…regal color that has made them famous.
This deep gold color, like the rays of a tropical sunset trapped in a perfect sphere, can only be found in the Philippines. Owing to its rarity, this “miracle of nature” commands higher prices compared to its counterparts in Tahiti and Japan.
A pearl, by definition, is an organic crystal formed by nacreous layers of Conchiolin and Calcium carbonate. It takes its color from the mantle of the oyster’s shell that houses it, much like a living jewel box. The Shell produces pearls of various shades, from silvery White to golden -Yellow--depending on Where and how it was cultivated.
The oyster’s gestation period takes five to six years from hatchery to harvest. Even after such a prolonged stretch, there is no guarantee of a successful harvest, as there are many key factors that come into play.
“A production of a single pearl requires 323 steps-and if one of these goes Wrong, the perfection of a pearl will be affected,” explained the farm’s resident manager, Clara Llorando, whose office walls were festooned with intricate and multi-colored charts and maps.
Before the two-year-old baby Oysters are placed in caged baskets and tossed into the sea, a mineral nucleus is
surgically inserted in its Core-its gonad, to be specific-by one of Jewelmer’s Japanese-trained master grafters. The pearl will form around this foreign nucleus.
For the next three years, divers will regularly flip over the basket every week. This is done to ensure that the pearls’ shape will be as round as possible.
“Every 30 days, the oysters are taken out of the water, cleaned of all the small crustaceans and shellfish growing on them, and checked by X-ray to see if the pearl inside them hasn’t been expelled or rejected,” she added.
The most crucial step, however, takes place on dry land and behind closed, guarded doors: the laboratory.
It was here where the company’s real triumph took place in the late 1990’s, when a team of Japanese and Filipino biologists initially managed to reproduce the gold-lipped Pinctada maxima.
Inside the lab, the baby oysters-all affectionately nurtured, faithful to the Jewelmer ethos of TLC (tender loving Care)-start to develop their nacre (mother of pearl) as they cling to nets.
“To do this, we feed the larvae a specific type of plankton-every two hours for nine days,” says one of the marine biologists, Doris Domingo, who toured us around a sterilized room of test tubes and microscopes. “Only 3% of these may be used for breeding. Three to four million bivalves are Constantly being cultured, and each of these are followed through each stage.” She added that the plankton alone is so priceless to their operation that test tube samples are Securely Stashed away in Switzerland.
Yet even after Such an exhaustive procedure, harvested pearls don’t always come out in the ideal shape and color -those perfectly smooth, golden, round orbs that can fetch up to $400 in jewelry shops around the world.
“Many of the pearls come out spoiled or deformed, while others take the shape of a spinning top or baroque” she says. “And not all are gold – they may come in alternating shades of silver, pink or champagne.”
The Jewelmer farms littered across Palawan yield pearls in the hundreds of thousands annually. Of those roughly 75% are deemed “commercially viable” and only 2% are regarded as “perfect”. There are also different criteria to appraise a pearl’s value: color, size, skin, quality, luster and orient.
The orient (or “inner glow”) is perhaps the most difficult to judge, since iridescence is largely an optical phenomena. But for the south sea pearl, it is the most powerful aesthetic feature – making it look alive, like a ball emanating fire from within.
Creating the perfect pearl strand is another story altogether. It has to be painstakingly sorted out from more than 200000 pearls from several years of harvest. They even have an immaculate clinical room specifically designed to allow natural sunlight to seep in for the selection of pearls, whose size range from 11 to 14 mm in diameter.
It is where the grading stage takes place. “We sort them by their shapes, quality, color and finally their size.” Explained Jewelmer commercial director Pierre Fallourd. “It even takes a second or a third time to grade the pearls according to their quality – which is the most difficult to be determined. The orient reflection can go from pink to green.”
Once the pieces have been sorted and separated, they are either sold in batches to wholesalers or dispatched to the Jewelmer workshop, where over 30 artisans and goldsmiths are responsible for the fabrication of their jewelry, diligently designed by a French and Filipino team who takes inspiration from nature.
The quality of a pearl is a direct reflection of the environment from which it is cultivated. “Any change in water temperature, or pollution of the sea will affect the oysters,” says Branellec, an avowed environmentalist who rallies against the widespread practice of dynamite and cyanide fishing. “Anything that the oyster feels or experiences is reflected in the pearl, which can therefore lose its quality.”
By necessity, a pearl farm should be “bio-friendly, bio-active, and even bio-regenerative” because its protected areas allow bio-density and biodiversity to increase. It is absolutely essential to have pristine waters to maintain the stability of the ecosystem.
Palawan’s South Sea pearl remains the only gem that is formed and harvested in a non-extractive and environmentally sound manner: no normal processes are interrupted, no disruptive outside variables are introduced, and do other living things are disturbed or endangered to create it. Thus each pearl is the result of the harmony between man and nature. Throughout the years, Jewelmer has educated its workers about the importance of maintaining this symbiotic balance with nature. It is, after all, the hand that feeds them.
They’ve also launched livelihood programs, such as the Save Palawan Seas Foundation (SPSF), which has developed income? generating opportunities for the indigent families of Palawan’s coastal communities-many of whom were former dynamite fishers that have since found a new vocation as seaweed farmers, handicraft makers, and organic vegetable growers.
“Every year, we produce more oysters than what we have taken out from the sea in decades,” says Branellec, who has reduced the carbon footprint in the islands where they operate by using solar energy and coco diesel. "In the areas where our farms are, did you know that the population has increased by five to six times?”
Deafened by the thunderous roar of the Dauphin’s rotor blades as we made our descent into the farm it was difficult to express disbelief over what we had just seen as we skirted through the clouds: fields of gold worth no small fortune, yet whose bounty was so fragile in the face of nature.
There may be pearls worth a king’s ransom lurking beneath the waters of Palawan, but the real treasure may be the sea itself, and the living, breathing jewel boxes that call it home.
