The Pearl Princess and her Pinctada Pad

Although most readers of this blog recognise Paspaley as synonymous with South Sea pearls, the Paspaleys have their hands in loads of ventures from wine, to livestock, and even five-star, pearl-inspired hotels.

The Pinctada Cable Beach Resort in the Kimberley is the vision of pearl princess Marilynne Paspaley, who intends the establishment to be the first of several. The resort has only been in operation for a half year, but has already been honoured with two awards.

I’ve not yet sojourned in the pad so I hesitate to comment on the amenities, but with suites named Master Pearler and studios named Shinju Garden and Shinju Pool, the pad seems fit for pearlers staying in Broome.

What’s the point of this? Diversification. If their diversification pays well, pearl sales can slow, yet the organisation may continue to grow. But if the diversification fails, then the bigger they are, the harder . . .

La merde is hitting l’oscillator in Tahiti

Submitted by Bafoon

About three months ago we were warned of strange events about to happen in Tahiti:

From now on, you may want to keep an eye on Tahiti, where the shit will hit the fan during the next weeks on the political scene which will also have implications on the pearling scene. Yesterday, Gaston Tong Sang, ex President of FP, and long-time mayor of Bora Bora got arrested temporarily, then released... similar to what happened to Gaston Flosse a short time before.

Monsieur Flosse, a Senator in Paris, has immunity which quite likely will be lifted and many, many will plunge into the abyss, some of them well-known. This is just the tip of the iceberg that many claim goes back to Chirac and the disappearance of a journalist a few years ago who had gathered too much evidence of bribes, cheating and secret accounts at the highest level.

The lobby of those to be accused is very, very strong, and it seems this is now a power-play, either they can keep the lid on it or not. If not, there will be explosions, from Mururoa to the Elysee.

Well, predetonation has taken place, with a report from Radio New Zealand November 10th entitled Corruption probe lands French Polynesia’s Flosse in jail reporting as follows:

The French Polynesian veteran politician, Gaston Flosse, has been detained after being questioned by investigative judges in Papeete over his role in the OPT corruption affair. After being questioned for several hours, Mr. Flosse, who lost his parliamentary immunity as French senator last week, has been transferred to Tahiti’s Nuutania jail. This comes less than two months after he was charged with corruption amid claims that over more than a decade his party received regular and massive kickbacks from a French advertising executive, Hubert Haddad, who has been in the Nuutania jail since June.

Dozens of Mr. Flosse’s supporters accompanied him to the prison from the court building in Papeete, where hundreds of people had gathered in his support. Last month, he was convicted for misuse of public funds but was allowed to keep his political mandates because of an appeal to France’s highest court.

Mr. Flosse, who is 78, is also a member of the French Polynesian assembly and was the territory’s president for most of the past two decades.

For many, many years Tahiti and its main export (South Sea pearls) have been under growing clouds of suspicion for deceitful practices and administrative chicanery. Now that the facts are becoming public, this puts the pearl industry in an even worse situation than before. Dealer and consumer confidence have cratered in the product, and this might well augur the death knell of the French Polynesian industry.

The New Pink Pearl

The conch pearl has always been an intriguing gem. May one call these non-nacreous concretions pearls? I’ve always thought so. They are beautiful in their own right, but information and research has been sparse at best. I believe the only real account of the gem is in The Pink Pearl, by Bari and Federman.

Thanks to the efforts of Drs. Héctor Acosta-Salmón and Megan Davis of Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, we may soon learn much more about this elusive gem. Using modified conventional techniques of seeding both freshwater and saltwater mollusks, efforts to culture both beaded and non-beaded conch pearls in the Strombus gigas have proven successful.

The research Acosta-Salmón and Davis conducted was not secret. They published their relaxation techniques years ago. In order to graft the Strombus gigas, it is first necessary to relax the snail so the innards become exposed. The locations of the grafts remain proprietary, a possible insinuation that the gonad is not necessarily host to the beaded pearl.

Conch pearls are among the most expensive, widely sought natural pearls today. Mikimoto has created extensive lines for their local market utilising these natural gems found only as a byproduct of the conch fishing industry in the Caribbean.

With the advent of this culture technology, will we see a Kokichi-esque shift from the naturals to the cultured? It remains to be determined whether the non-beaded cultured specimens will differ in any ascertainable way from their natural counterparts. A report is soon to publish in Gems & Gemology detailing GIA’s independent analysis. This seems to be a waiting game.

The market for natural conch will undoubtedly remain. Natural pearls, now overshadowed but the science of perliculture, have always maintained a degree of market share. But the price dips in the 1920s pushed many natural dealers to the brink. What will become of those who’ve hoarded conch pearls over the past decade, watching their investment flourish with the consistently rising values of this non-culturable pearl?