Full Article: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/201104/s3203168.htm
Full Audio of the talk(about 5mins): http://www.abc.net.au/ra/pacbeat/stories/m1984799.asx
Full Audio of the talk(about 5mins): http://www.abc.net.au/ra/pacbeat/stories/m1984799.asx
Updated April 29, 2011 0823
Researchers in the Marshall Islands are looking at ways to develop the country's pearl industry.
Black pearls have proved a lucrative export for other countries in the region - particularly French Polynesia - and scientists are hoping to repeat the success in the Marshalls.
Climate change is likely to impact the fragile environments that pearl growing requires.. and the Marshall Islands is no exception.
Presenter:Geraldine Coutts
Speakerr Maria Haws, Professor of Aquaculture, University of Hawaii
DR HAWS: When we started working in the Marshall Islands many years ago, it did seem to have some favourable indications that it could be successful there.
COUTTS: And what are they?
DR HAWS: Well actually, pearl farming in the Marshall Islands and in Micronesia in general got discovered by the Japanese before the Second World War and it showed a lot of promise. They have all the natural conditions that are favourable for pearl farming, very clean water, a lot of large calm lagoons, a willing workforce, so it looks like in the 90s when people really got this started again in the Marshalls and Micronesia as well.
COUTTS: Well, at what stage are you? Have you produced pearls yet that you can sell?
DR HAWS: Yes actually the Marshall Islands have been producing pearls since the 90s. It's been a bit of an up and down history in the Marshalls. One of the problems we have in the Micronesian islands in general is that there's not a very high abundance of wild pearl oysters and therefore it's very difficult to collect the young juveniles, the pearl oyster spat in large numbers as they do in French Polynesia and in the Cook Islands, and naturally the basis for most of the places you will see thriving pearl industries is this ability to collect wild spat. So in the Marshall Islands what people had to do is basically go to hatchery technology and produce the pearl oysters in hatcheries.
COUTTS: And you said that it's been a bit of a rollercoaster, it's been on again off again. Why is that? Is it because the environment is fragile in the Marshalls?
DR HAWS: No actually, the environment is still in fairly good shape, although we're of course concerned about some human impacts, including climate change. The main difficulty has been just getting the hatchery technology off the ground. Again there's been sporadic hatchery production, but at one point most of the farms had closed down because the hatcheries couldn't produce the small pearl oysters. Fortunately, just a couple of years ago, that was remedied by our local aquaculture extension agent, Julius Lucky and he was very ably assisted by Provan Crump who originally came from Australia and learned aquaculture there and they actually just produced hundreds-of-thousands of pearl oysters spat that are out in two of the newer farms in Namdrik and Rongelap Island.
COUTTS: So what are you're key challenges at the moment?
DR HAWS: The key challenges right now are simply funding, but the people who are doing the pearl farming, they've either been very small local companies or they've been run by the local outer island governments and of course the budget of the Marshall Islands is not in good shape. It's very difficult for its producers to obtain credit. So what we've been trying to do is aquaculture professionals have helped them get some ground funding and since we've used that to get them off the ground again.
COUTTS: Is it providing much of an employment opportunity for many Marshallese?
DR HAWS: Oh absolutely. In every case where there's been pearl farms in the outer islands and again these are very remote islands where there is essentially no industry of any kind other than some local fishing, a little copra making which of course is also not doing well right now. Yes, every farm employs dozens of people. In fact it may be the only source of employment other than a few government jobs on these outer islands, so that's one reason we've really persisted with this, inspite of some of the difficulties as you said. It's really one of the few feasible development opportunities for many of these small Pacific Islands.
COUTTS: Are they distinct the pearls that are produced in the Marshall Islands?
DR HAWS: Yes, to some degree. Most people who grade or know about pearls they can often tell most exactly, for example, in French Polynesia where the pearls came from island and the differences may be a bit subtle, but there's difference in the lustre, the exact colours that you get and the Marshall Island pearls. We've seen everything from islands that produce a lot of very beautiful silvery black pearls, to other islands that produce a lot of blue green pearls and all of them sell very readily to the local market or regional market, so selling them is not actually an issue right now.
COUTTS: And is that what is produced in the Marshall Islands the black ones, I mean do you have the pink and the yellow I mean the full spectrum?
DR HAWS: No, ours is the black lip pearl oyster and even though it produces a pretty large range of colours, they are mostly black so-called Tahitian pearls that you find there.
COUTTS: You're also working on Rongelap, one of the nuclear affected atolls. Are there traces of radioactivity, do they glow in the dark?
DR HAWS: No, no, although there is still radioactivity on the land, all the marine areas are pretty much free of radiation and all those nuclear affected islands fortunately, so no it doesn't affect the pearls. But again, we're hoping this will be a stimulus in Rongelap for people to may be slowly resettle the island as the clean up proceeds and they start to rebuild their infrastructure.
COUTTS: Now is it part of the tourism industry or are they exported, can you buy them on the international market?
DR HAWS: Well actually, it's a bit difficult to get them on the international market, because it's sort of a limited boutique production at this point. What we do is to...
COUTTS: Does that put an extra dollar on them, because they are hard to get?
DR HAWS: Yes, actually the prices for the Marshall Islands and actually even the pearls from the FSM are quite high, because what we do is we train people to grade them and price them and then produce their own jewellery on island and they sell almost all of the island right now or within the region. I mean there is enough people who are very interested in specifically buying Rongelap pearls, Namdrik pearls or Nukuoro pearls that we really don't have much of a problem selling them at the moment.
