Hi everyone, hectic couple months here in Fiji.
Caught up with some of the pearl forum people in HK.
I thought this Hong Kong show was a little better from the farmers perspective, with higher prices.
We are busy down here. I thought i would post a few shots on what we have been doing.
Hatchery run - these are our babies at about 1 week old. They buzz around under the microscope. We are experiencing cooler water temps then normal and this is resulting in larvae taking longer to grow and get out of the hatchery.
Growing larvae is all about the food - we grow several species of algae to feed the young larvae as they grow. Here is a picture of our algal lab where we grow the algae.
Here are some slightly older shells being moved and graded - lots and lots of work to make Fiji pearls. We actually start with mixing eggs and sperm of the selected adults.
Here a picture of our newly implanted shells being handled and put into our hanging nets. We really look after our shells as they cost us lots of $'s and we just don't have that many.
By the way we are harvesting so i guess I should show the result of all this work. Harvest is looking pretty good. Each line and place where the pearls are coming from produces pearls slightly different - we have around 28,000 shells to harvest. Unfortunately not all will have a "saleable pearl" - here are some pics of pearls that i picked out of the harvesting bowl this morning. All natural - not even washed up yet. Love these colours.
Will post more shots of pearls coming in each day. Enjoy.
, "There is nothing quite like the idea of a black pearl", says Blackpearldude 
