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Kimberley coast near Eighty Mile Beach, WA; the Paspaley Pearl (inset)

SEED Capital

As an oyster, pinctada maxima can be a little, well, The seamless amalgam of sea and sky off Eighty pearl. This is the nerve centre of an industry giving Australia luxury Mile Beach on the West Australian coast is 50 shades of grey-blue. cachet. Along with fine merino wool, opals, premium wine, crocodile inelegant. But in true ugly duckling to swan style, the The dawn is warm, caressing and full of promise. Whales are skin and pink diamonds, our lustrous gems are lauded on the world treasures it produces signal Australia’s luxury credentials heading to Camden Sound to calve. stage. Australia’s South Sea pearls are considered the pinnacle of Below deck on the sparkling-white, 1200-tonne, 51m operations cultured pearls, says James Paspaley, chair of the Pearl Producers SUSAN SKELLY to the world. goes to sea to witness vessel Paspaley 4, anchored at Paterson Shoal, 80km south-west of Association and CEO of the Paspaley Group of Companies. “They the surgical genesis of pearly perfection. Broome, 18 Japanese “doctors” have been at their stainless-steel changed the way cultured pearls are viewed.” operating stations since 6.30am, surrounded by their tools of trade: Western Australia’s pearl industry is worth $100m-$150m a year, clamps, surgical scissors, glass plates, scalpels, a large array of the state’s second most valuable fishing industry after rock lobster. instruments with keyhole surgery cred, and plastic boxes that could The day before, another vessel, the Vansittart, picked up the shells well contain after-dinner mints. There are vacuum flasks of coffee from the holding sites at Cape Bossut, 106km south-west of Broome. and bowls of sweets. An antiseptic smell mingles with that of brine. Pulling up alongside Paspaley 4, it was all hands on deck. Young, fit, The patients, several thousand, are pinctada maxima, the glamor- seasonal workers from Wales, Germany, Estonia, England and ous oyster shells with dazzling mother-of-pearl interiors and big Sweden, and old hands from Japan, pulled on hard hats, long socks ambitions. The technicians are experts in seeding oysters, setting and gumboots, gloves that reached to the armpits, and bandanas,

kimberley coast photography: frances andrijich; paspaley pearl: courtesy paspaley in motion the process that tricks an oyster into yielding a premium before swinging into action, each with a specific task to do. 

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The celebrated La Peregrina (above); Paspaley cultured pearls (right); oyster shells (below)

becomes the mother of pearl inside the shell. It is placed on the bench and cut into tiny squares. The technician makes an incision into the membrane of the oyster’s gonad. He skewers a wafer of mantle tissue and deftly inserts it into the gland, then manoeuvres in the “mint” – in reality a ball of ground, semi-freshwater clam shell from the Mississippi River in the US. This is the irritant that, in months to come, the nacre secretions will want to circle and contain, forming, with luck, a pearl in the process. Head technician Takenobu Hamaguchi has been seeding oysters for 28 years, schooled by his father from the age of 18. His uncle, Junichi Hamaguchi, was one of the first two seeders to come to Australia in 1956, when the first pearl farms began at WA’s Kuri Bay. He hailed from a small village adjoining Ago Bay, the southern part of Japan’s Shima Peninsula, known for its pearl culture. If he wasn’t seeding pearls, Hamaguchi muses, he might have become a chef. He describes the process as a combination of crafts- After being cleaned and removed from frames of eight, the shells manship and spirit, and has nothing but gratitude for both nature had been packed into baskets of 20, stacked like a log of oversized and the host oyster. Is he, in a sense, a surgeon? Anzac biscuits, then placed on a conveyor belt to spend the night “I don’t know how a surgeon feels,” says Hamaguchi, “They aim relaxing in four tanks, their spa treatment a continuous 200 tonne for saving lives, we aim for perfection.” Yet, like a surgeon, his instru- salt-water soak to relax them into opening. In the pre-dawn hours, ments are, he says, an extension of his hands, dictated by skill, no black plastic chocks were gently inserted to keep the shell lids apart. luck involved. He loves creating something out of “pure nature”, Now, in the “operating theatre”, the shells are placed into the sur- something that humans can touch and feel. “Pearls are the only geon’s clamp. Inside are the big, fat, fleshy oysters (a much more jewels that have warmth.” Takenobu Hamaguchi is one of 18 tech- supersized beast than their Sydney Rock or Coffin Bay fine-dining nicians who are on the job today. They will put in six or seven hours cousins) and often a tiny gill crab or miniature translucent shrimp. (with breaks) and seed between 500 and 600 oysters each. All the First job is to cut a 5mm ribbon of the mantle, or oyster lip, from a technicians have Japanese ancestry, even though many live in

prime-looking sacrificial shell. The mantle secretes the nacre that Australia or divide their time between Australia and Japan.  la peregrina photography: corbis; oyster shells: alamy; cultured pearls: martin mischkulnig

134 QANTAS march 2014 Pearling talkabout

After the seeding process, frames with seeded oysters are returned industry], but is an obstacle the retail business needs to address. to the sea floor at a holding site for a further recuperation period There are huge differences among pearls and the average consumer before being taken to oyster farms in pristine waters often thousands doesn’t understand that. Rarity is a driver of value.” of kilometres from where the shells were fished. At the farms, the While the 1990s were considered the glory days of pearl farming, shell frames are suspended on long “washing lines” attached to James Paspaley sees growth and retail expansion ahead. Pearls, buoys for up to two years to be nurtured by huge, nutrient-rich tides. despite being historically the province of kings, queens and Pearl harvest is every June and September. The top two per cent maharajas, he says, are only two per cent of the jewellery category. are retailed as Paspaley pearls, the rest sold through its wholesaling Discerning consumers will always want the real thing. In the arm, Paspaley Pearling Company. luxury pearl market, the best of the best have an incomparable To protect the mollusc from extinction, the WA Department of luminescence that makes them sought-after. Pearls are judged by Fisheries limits pearl farming licences (a total of 14 were issued last the “five virtues” – lustre, complexion, shape, colour and size. There’s year) and sets an annual quota of wild shell. According to Shane an X factor, though, imparted by a colourful history of desire and O’Donoghue, the department’s Northern Bioregion manager, the ownership. Yes, size matters. The most famous pearls in history total allowable catch (TAC) of wild stock across designated zones include the Big Pink Pearl (470ct), a rare baroque abalone pearl; the for 2013 was 678,000.The minimum catch size is 120mm, although Hope Pearl (450ct), a white drop-shaped blister, natural salt-water there is currently a trial involving 100mm oysters. pearl; and the baroque Arco Valley Pearl (575ct), said to have been It’s a high-risk business with plenty to fear: cyclones that churn up given to Kublai Khan by Marco Polo. the seabeds (recovery can take 10 years); oyster disease; oil spillage The pear-shaped La Peregrina is one of the most celebrated pearls. and resource explorations that compromise a pristine environment It dates from the 16th century, was painted by Velázquez and and tempt the labour supply away; biosecurity issues that foreign belonged to King Philip II of Spain and to Queen Mary I. Richard vessels bring; global warming. The oyster is high-maintenance, a Burton bought it for Elizabeth Taylor in 1969 for $US37,000. Burton finicky creature that is easily, sometimes fatally, stressed. worked with Cartier to have it hung on a diamond and ruby necklace, Diver deaths in Broome were common in the first half of the 20th which fetched a world-record price of $US11,842,500 in 2011 when century (the local cemetery honours 919 who lost their lives, 33 in Taylor’s jewellery collection went under the hammer. 1914 alone), and while fatalities have been greatly reduced, divers The jewel in the Paspaley crown is more discreet: the Paspaley still face danger. An inquest by the WA coroner into the death of Pearl is 20.4mm, perfectly round with white-pink lustre. It was a 22-year-old diver during a pearling operation in April 2012 is harvested in 2003 from a second seeding. Then there’s the Vivienne, pending, awaiting the results of a WorkSafe inquiry. named for Paspaley chairman Nick Paspaley’s mother, a strand that The latest threat is more manmade – in the form of an avalanche features 26 perfectly round 17-21mm Australian South Sea pearls, of cultured pearls from Indonesia and China (the latter annually each one said to be as rare or rarer than a 10ct diamond due to its harvesting 20 tonnes of marine-cultured pearls from the Akoya size and quality. According to Paspaley, it took nearly a decade of oyster and 1500 tonnes of freshwater pearls), which risks reducing harvests to achieve. It has a current price tag of $1.13m. the demand for and the value of pearls locally. In 1992, a single Paspaley strand of 23 pearls set a world record for But perhaps the biggest obstacle to pearl prosperity is ignorance cultured pearls, bringing $US2.3m at about the difference between premium and not-so-premium pearls. For airfares and holiday a Sotheby’s auction in New York. Not packages to Broome call “Chinese freshwater pearls can cost just cents, while an Australian Qantas Holidays on 1300 bad for something that sprang from a South Sea pearl can fetch a million [dollars] a piece,” James Paspaley 735 542 or visit qantas.com/ humble Aussie oyster shell. Proof that

says. “The lack of education is not a physical threat [to the holidaysaustralianway from little things, big things grow. photography: courtesy paspaley

Paspaley boats tend the oyster lines

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