Blue Pearls Now Available to be made into individual designs just for you!!

I am now the Melbourne supplier of New Zealand Blue Pearls from the Silverdale Marine Hatchery.

Haliotis iris, or the black foot abalone, is a sea snail, which lives in rocky, coastal areas at depths between one and 15 metres.

It’s a fussy eater, reacts badly to stress, is very mobile, has just one shell and is a haemophiliac.

All of which makes cultivating a paua pearl a tricky prospect.

To prompt a paua into making a pearl, an insert is affixed to the paua’s shell (some inserts poke through, some are attached with special glue).

The shape of the insert will dictate the ultimate shape of the pearl. Once the insert is beneath the mantle, the paua begins to overlay this nucleus with its nacre.

The lustre and colour of the pearl depends on the thickness and quality of the nacre the paua secretes over the insert.

Wild paua are nucleated, as the process is called, after they have been harvested at 125mm; hatchery paua are nucleated much smaller and therefore produce smaller pearls.

The nucleation process must be done extremely carefully; a single nick to the haemophiliac paua’s black foot will kill it; too much stress and paua will not cover the insert.

When the paua are harvested two to three years later, the meat is shucked, and the pearl is cut out from the shell.

To ready the paua pearl for use in jewellery, the insert is removed, the back of the pearl is filled and a matching piece of shell attached to the back, producing a pearl known as a mabé pearl.

Direct from New Zealand Pearl Farms	Assorted sizes, qualities, shapes and colours	"Haliotis iris" is commonly known as the New Zealand Paua shell