mussel pearls

[scallop007]

backyard pearls

backyard pearls

hey thats great,, you found a few, down your way,, i'm in the process of getting the 4 or 5 diffrent kinds of mussel shells on here. some mussel pearls have a shine to them in one type ,others are a flat finish.the shells that have a rectangle style shape, have the glossy finish. my son went scallop fishing last week in the bay of fundy and got around 300 scallop pearls. a couple are matched button ones about 5mm and one looks like a bullet,, some are as large as 10mm. only saved what he could get in one day,they are usually out for 4 or 5 days.
he got 1 very rare purple shell about 5" i will post a picture of that as well. have a good one,,,007

 

[pierrettedE]

hello everyone,

I guess this is what happens when a modern commercial fisherman meets a forum that touches on the topic of natural pearls.

I can imagine there are "few" people that are rather skeptical about the development of this thread. Especially since "someone " can't get any accurate photos so far.

True, I haven't seen any of these non-nacreous blue mussel and atlantic scallop pearls, but if you read up a few posts you'll see that we did find 6 tiny ones during a search through 12 carefully selected mussels. (there are millions from which to choose).

The commercial fishery in Nova Scotia is immense in its' capabilities when compared to a time when people would have been familiar with natural pearls. In addition, the pearls we find here are non-nacreous and have generally been seen as a very negative by-product of the molluscs they are selling to the food industry. Great care is taken in aquaculture projects to decrease the incidence of concretions in blue mussels, that are known to produce, when conditions dictate, tiny little pearls. The scallops, mentioned above, are not being dug one by one or even in small fishing vessels. The crues live on-board for 4-5 days and must prepare the scallops for sale. They go through thousands of pounds of shells. .The "pearls" are nuisances. Large ones are often kept for curiosity but so far have had no commercial value. [I do have quite a few of these, with a nice 3-piece set I intend to make something of one day. I would loveee to see AND PHOTOGRAPH your new ones Eric]

Then there are clam pearls/ quahog pearls. These too are found now and again but the fishery is not as developped and business being business... One company seems to have a large share of it I think.

Sometimes I'm very long-winded!

I guess my short point was that molluscs are being caught by the tons in modern commercial vessels now and pearls from our native Atlantic shellfish have been seen as a negative part of the fishery. They make shellfish undesirable and have had no commercial value. Obviously, there are some to be found.

 

[Caitlin]

Eric is sending me some- for the price of postage. I will photo them.

Very interesting observations and comments, Pierrette.

I wonder what the clam fishermen do with quahog pearls? Tthey are very beautiful, but fragile. Large ones are desirable and sell high though they may still need a campaign to get word out. If you haven't seen the Victorian set of 2 quahog pearls that appeared elsewhere on this site. Here it is.
https://www.pearl-guide.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121&highlight=quahog

 

[pierrettedE]

Hi Caitlin, that's wonderful! Go Eric!

Quahog pearls: Unfortunately, the instances of finding quahog pearls seems low. The fishery is as follow:

-There are a few aquaculture farms but they take great care NOT to produce any concretions in their product. They may certainly have encountered some but I wouldn't know.

Wild fishery.
-It would be divided into 2-3 parts. Individual clam licences that are used for harvest along the shoreline, by foot. The amounts are small, the shellfish are varied but mostlt soft-shelled clams I think.
-Then, there are the larger vessels with larger quota. These vessels fish in coastal waters to quite far out I believe. Some boats ARE equipped with their own processing "plants" but their techniques are actually guarded. - "hats off Mr. Risley, d'Entremont here! *wink" -
- This fishery is the same on a much smaller scale nearer coastal shores but has yet to prove completely viable. Pearls would be more likely to be found and saved. There are only a handful of licenses and they are not all being used. I guess this would be where my family fits in. Clams/quahogs have a very limited "shell-life" haha if not processed immediately. This is difficult as the species must be seperated and are all found dwelling in similar spots. Try doing this by-hand with 2 tons of shells in a very, very short time. Then, they would need be shelled, packed and frozen to be shipped worldwide. hmm some techniques are so close, yet so far!
** Pearls... hey, if we could find a decent market maybe we could add their recovery among the series of conveyor belt steps in processing. hmmm... thow us a bone anyone

 

[Slraep]

Slraep, "ahhhhh shoot!" I can't believe you're a woman! I've missed that! After all the posts that i've read from you... you'de think i would have figured that one out by now.

i agree whole-heartedly about the live mussels... I would obviously NOT make a great pearl farmer... hmmm that's pretty much being a hypocrit is it not? gee, maybe i should ... gosh, I'm struggling with my own conscience here...

Hi Pierrette,

I've been off the forum for a while and totally missed this post of yours till now. Yes, I am a woman. I use to be on another forum and all the people there thought I was a man too. One angry woman e-mailed me when she found out I was a female because I spoiled some kind of strange fantasy of hers where she imagined me looking like Pierce Brosnan. I really did not want to know any more about that...

As a pearl lover, I constantly struggle with my own conscience reguarding them too. Feels good to have the pearls, but there's always a big twinge of major guilt after pondering their origin. Sigh.

The mussel pics are from Singing Sands Beach, Basin Head, P.E.I. The sand really does sing when you walk on it. It's of a very fine type and is white. The mussel beds are at the foot of some red soil cliffs. Lots of crabs in the area too.

Slraep

 

[terence]

ok so I know its been a VERY long time since this conversation ended, but I just found it today while trying to find out more about pearls in mussels. I didn't read them all and forgive me if ive missed it but I was very surprised to see that everyone was so shocked to hear that mussels have pearls and I never see anyone say to much about them to I just wanted to say my 2 cents worth and that's that. I just creaked this account for this reason and might never check it again but I can get emails anyways

Where Im from and currently live again, mussels are a very common and popular part of your diet lol a lot of us can walk to our front or back years to the beach and get them. so a lot of the mussels we eat are grabbed in the wild. I love them as do my whole family and most people I know, the most common way to eat them is bottling them in vinegar. over the years ive noticed that I NEVER get pearls in the store bought ones (a very good thing) but pretty much every bottle or every time I eat wild ones I end up eating until I bite a pearl and then I have to stop because it such an unpleasant feeling. One that I hate so much that I don't eat mussels much anymore because of the fear of biting one. ANYWAYS They are VERY VERY common ive never see them uncooked but in cooked mussels u can see them very easy in bigger mussels before u eat it if u take the time to look but the small mussels have them so tiny that u cant even see them. many times u can get a bunch of pearls in just one single mussel. ive never heard of anyone collecting them or that they would be valuable to anyone. But living in newfoundland Canada, (a big island) mussels are so common and so are the pearls that I doubt anyone ever thinks they might be worth anything. anyways I don't know if anyone will see this or even care anymore but id be happy to answer any questions or help in any way that I could

 

[Brogansheehan]

I've had a similar experience and always thought the pearls were worthless.