Few Interesting Things That You Must Know About a Pearl
Pearls are made in the mollusk when an irritant enters its shell. Due to irritation the mollusks will secrete very thin and concentric nacre layers, which is calcium carbonate.
Any mollusk can produce pearl and therefore there are many farms that use these mollusks and create an irritation artificially and thus cultured pearls are created. You may click over here to learn more about cultured pearls.
Natural pearls
These pearls are created naturally by wild oysters that are living inside the sea. Natural pearls have become rare these days as the pearl producing oysters are getting depleted due to many different reasons.
In the 18th – 19th century most of the pearl bearing oysters were already hunted by people and therefore nowadays only 1 out of more than 10,000 oysters will really create pearl of considerable size.
Cultured pearls
These cultured pearls are created by human intervention which is formed within living oyster. As the nucleus is implanted surgically within oyster’s flesh, it will recognize it as irritant and starts coating it with thin layers of nacre.
After a period of time pearl is covered with beautiful nacre which is an iridescent substance.
Pearl producing mollusk
Mollusk is one of the original forms of sea animal life which dates back to 550 million years. Pearl is a kind of organic gemstones that is formed within a living pearl.
These pearl-producing mollusks can also live in freshwater too. Freshwater mollusks are usually referred as mussels and saltwater mollusks are called as oysters.
The name “pearl oyster” will suggest close relationship with few other oyster types, which are actually distinct species from other edible oysters and they have anatomical and behavioral differences.
Composition of pearl nucleus
In any harvested pearl, the nucleus of pearl, is not much visible, however it is extremely important for the culturing process.
This nucleus is a kind of seed which impregnates the oyster to produce the gem, although all the process is really not complete unless small mantel piece of tissue can be inserted with bead.
In order to create nucleus, the bead material is used which is exclusively derived from the freshwater mussel shells that are found in rivers of the North America.
These shells harvested from all these rivers will be first transported to various Asian countries for further processing.
