At an age of two years, the young-adult oysters are taken out of their cages and hand-cleaned with a small machete-knife (they have a whole array of marine life growing on their shells: algae, sponges, barnacles, ascidians, etc.). This individualized hand cleaning procedure is very important to the pearl oyster culturing process and must be performed on every oyster every two months. After this crucial cleaning the oysters are placed inside plastic trays and taken to the "Pearl Lab", where the seeding or "grafting" operation takes place. Without this operation, no cultured pearls would be obtained.

In all other pearl producing countries the pearl oysters are forced to open by means of steel pliers, which causes a lot of mortality (from 30 to 70%, depending on the species used). You need the oyster to open up, in order to perform the "seeding" operation. In our farm we do not force the oysters to open, but instead we gently coax them to relax. Now the operation can finally take place.

We can perform two different kinds of procedures in order to produce two different varieties of pearls: mabe pearls (also known as "Half-Pearls") and (loose) cultured pearls. The procedures are described next...

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