What Percent Of Oysters Make Pearls

In nature any wild oyster clam or mussel produce a pearl only rarely.

What percent of oysters make pearls. It helps to understand how a pearl forms within a mollusk. It only takes one oyster to release its gonad to encourage other oysters to commence spawning. The original japanese cultured pearls known as akoya pearls are produced by a species of small pearl oyster pinctada fucata martensii which is no bigger than 6 to 8 cm 2 4 to 3 1 in in size hence akoya pearls larger than 10 mm in diameter are extremely rare and highly priced. Both these pearls can be obtained from pearl oysters.

The pearl s mantle is responsible for producing the nacre which actually forms the gem inside the oyster see how do oysters make pearls section below. By michelle bryner 20 november 2012. The world s oceans have become 30 percent more acidic since the start of the industrial revolution and that can kill oyster larvae and make it harder for oysters to form shells. After that it takes sorting through about 10 000 jewelry grade pearls to find enough matching ones in color shape luster and size to make a single high end pearl necklace.

Oysters pearl reproduction. Which mollusks make pearls. Precisely less than 1 percent of the total produce that makes it to the open market. Every species of oyster has the ability to make pearls but only a few make pearls of gem quality.

And of those pearls only about five percent will be of high enough quality to meet the standards to be further processed for high end jewelry. Pearls are also formed by clams and mussels but again not of gem quality that you would normally find in jewelry. Layer upon layer of nacre also known as mother of pearl coat a grain of sand until the iridescent gem is formed. Environmental cues fuel the spawning process with oysters preferring to spawn at water temperatures between 20 c to 30 c 68 f to 86 f and at salinity above 10ppt.

Oysters produce more pearls per capita and freshwater mussels are the relative rainmakers of the mollusk family but a pearl that occurs naturally in the wild is still a rare thing indeed. Oysters have a very interesting reproduction system mostly because some types have multiple sex organs. Conch and abalone pearls are exceedingly rare in the wild. Once adult oysters are ripe they can begin to spawn.

Though both are considered to be of equally good quality natural pearls are more expensive than their cultured counterparts and that has more to do with the fact that they are rare in nature. Today a hybrid mollusk is used in both japan and china in the. What percentage of oysters have pearls.