Geez, That's what you get for playing hookie. Sorry that's a vague reference to a recent post about Pearl-Guide being like school.
First off: Richard I was horrified to read that you sent me an email and I didn't respond. I get about a 100 spams a day and sometimes baby gets tossed with the bath water. I enjoyed meeting you very much in Tucson and when I didn't hear from you figured that you were as crazy busy as I was. Glad to be back in touch and thanks for the mention on your blog.
Secondly, thank you Heidi for being a pearl and sending me a heads up email. Yes, been a busy time.
I'm like Dfrey in that I love a good conspiracy when I can find one but I think that giving our gov over here that much credit is too much of a stretch. For those of you who missed it on Yahoo news, we have had SEVEN changes of president in FOUR years down here. I'm hoping that the last one (who I met last night and gave a ball cap to incidentally) will be the last for a while. I think there is back scratching that goes on and for sure Knotty, the little farmers are far less likely to get that itch satisfied. Maybe if my name was something like Bob Vaughn I wouldn't have an itch at all.
Our pearl promotion board (
www.perlesdetahiti.net) is doing the best they can, without a doubt, but at the risk of getting in hot water again though I can't keep my mouth shut and gotta say that the traffic of pearls under the radar must stop. It blew my mind in Tucson to see the amount of bogus pearls that the market was gobbling up. There is no way that all that is pre-export control stock that hasn't been absorbed yet.
Airdancer, there has been much talk here of a "Maison de la Perle" that would work as sort of cartel that pearls could funnel through and thus stability could begin. For now it's just been talk but if there is substantial info I'll let the board know.
I think that Jeremy brought up a really good point that is pretty hard to guess from an outsider's perspective. A number of years ago there was a number of factors that came together to produce an amazing boom year for natural spat collection. Prices of to-be-seeded oysters dropped and everyone grafted like nuts. This was also shortly after the approximate 40% increase in prices after the big shake out that followed our crash in 2003. Basically we all thought that things were on the mend, oysters were cheap and everyone that survived the storm was out in the clear again thus lending the collective confidence to re-invest anew.
That all brings me to another interesting point that you pretty much HAVE to be on the ground floor to see. A few years ago all across the Tuamotus (where the vast majority of farms are in operation) and to the Society islands there was phenomenon that can only be explained by the name of collective consciousness. The rays, turtles, triggerfish, etc all at once, within a period of only a few months, turned on us. Sorry to get anthropomorphic on all y'all but that's what it felt like. For some reason, across vast distances the predators that have let us farm our oysters peacefully for years suddenly realized that all they had to do was look up to find an amazingly abundant and unprotected food source that had been there the whole time. In one year we lost nearly half of our entire oyster stock. I have neighbors who had entire lines of seeded (the most expensive kind) oysters devoured. This was the proverbial straw for more than one farmer.
So what did everyone do? They protected their oysters with wire baskets and unknowingly set themselves up for the equivalent of a right hook after an upper cut to the jaw. Protective baskets didn't always get cleaned but unlike the simple strings most of us used, the baskets were not so forgiving. Pearls were dramatically smaller, color went down as did shape and most certainly quality. Protective baskets seemed so great at first because all of a sudden you had all your oysters again. The fouling on them however turned many into coffins. Mortality rates went through the roof as oysters struggled to breathe, let alone feed. Those that didn't die were a shadow of their predecessors with pearls that corresponded.
What does comfort me about this fairly black (pearl) thread though is that it confirms my deep conviction that a quality pearl will always retain it's value, despite the woes that a farmer and therefore market may be subjected to.