The Greening Industry of Pearls
If you're concerned about issues involving pollution, environmental threats, and non-sustainable agricultural practices, you probably don't have much reason to celebrate. With each passing page of the calendar, it seems as if our world becomes a bit more polluted and we're another step closer to an environmental armaggedon.
When Terry Shepherd does his hunting, you can be sure that he has a higher environmental ethic than many other hunters. While most sportsmen pursue their game with a blatant disregard for the ground and water on which they travel, most hunters are supremely concerned for the survival of our planet. But the sheer act of hunting has been called into question--how can the taking of a life benefit the earth from an environmentalist and conservationist viewpoint?
Shepherd, owner of The Pearl Outlet and affectionately known as "The Pearl Hunter," hunts for a prey that is not only regarded for its monetary and aesthetic value, but also for the benefits that it imparts on communities throughout the world. "The Greening Industry of Pearls" is a reality, not a dream. It's a rare industry that benefits the earth--in other words, gives back more than it takes. When was the last time you knew of another industry segment that did the same?
One press release on this subject, issued by Pearls of Joy, can be found HERE.
And Neil Anthony Sims has written an insightful piece on this very issue, which we have republished here in its entirety. Thanks for reading.
The Green Pearl Issue
by: Neil Anthony Sims
...So, are pearl farms bad, benign, or beneficial? Years ago, we had
suggested to several individuals actively involved in environmental
conservation in the South Pacific that instead of (or as well as) setting
up a National Marine Park, they should set up a pearl farm. Our suggestion
was ignored, or dismissed, I guess. I've not heard of any pearl farms in
any Southeast Asian or Melanesian National Parks, but I still think it's a
stellar idea. The biological benefits are tremendous (all that wonderful
vertical relief for biomass to build up, and for fish recruitment), the
protection afforded coral reefs by a pearl farm's armed guards is
unimpeachable, and there is no other industry that provides such stable,
lucrative employment opportunities for isolated atolls. You have probably
heard all this before, but please allow me to restate the case for the
defence en toto.
The benefits from pearl farming
Pearl farming is an ideal development opportunity for remote communities.
It is a sustainable, lucrative industry, and in many cases it provides
both direct and indirect benefits to the environment. The direct benefits
are from reducing the pressure on stocks depleted by years of pearl shell
fishing, and fostering the recovery of pearl oyster populations. Indirect
benefits are in providing a viable, sustainable industry for rural areas
and isolated atolls, and in encouraging greater stewardship of marine
resources.
Pearl farming is eminently sustainable, from a stock management
perspective. In almost every pearling area in the world today, farming is
based on spat produced in hatcheries, or taken from artificial spat
collectors. The only continuing reliance on fishing of wild stocks for
farms is in northern and western Australia, where the collection of wild
oysters is a tightly regulated, stable fishery.
Pearl farms can help overfished stocks recover by acting as reproductive
nodes - aggregations of large, densely packed, well-tended adult oysters.
The large number of fecund oysters, in close proximity to each other,
results in better synchronisation of spawning, higher fertilisation rates,
and far greater numbers of viable larvae, compared to the conditions of a
depleted population, where oysters may be hundreds of meters, or even
miles, apart. In French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, stocks formerly
suffered from continual boom-and-bust fishing for the oysters, solely for
the value of the pearl shell. However, over the last few decades, since
the advent of large-scale farming in these atolls, spat falls and wild
oyster stocks have both increased dramatically. Black Pearls, Inc. has a
pending application for a pearl farm lease here in Hawaii that is largely
justified by the project being a public-private partnership: a pearl farm
and stock re-establishment programme rolled into one. The oysters on the
farm will be the broodstock that replenish the surrounding reefs with
Hawaii's imperilled endemic oyster.
Pearl farming is labour-intensive, and provides employment for both farm
workers and in spin-off secondary support industries. Pearl farming
thereby relieves pressure on other marine resources, such as reef
fisheries, that might otherwise be subject to unsustainable commercial
exploitation.
Pearl farming also encourages island communities towards greater
stewardship over their natural resources, and fosters reassertion of their
traditional tenure regimes. At a pearl farm in Palawan, Philippines, where
we have worked for about five years, the pearl farm areas were the only
ones where there was any reasonable coral reef left. Prior to the farm's
establishment, I was told, dynamite fishing was rampant throughout the
area. To this day, the reefs that lie outside of the range of the farm
guards' spotlights and AK-47s, are completely damaged. The reefs beneath
the pearl farm rafts and longlines are indescribably beautiful.
Pearl oysters are filter feeders, and require no supplementary feeding. In
areas of high water turbidity, the oysters may even improve water quality,
by clearing suspended particulates. The animals are highly susceptible to
any environmental perturbation, which is why farms are often located in
remote areas. Farmers therefore are often strong advocates for marine
environmental protection and management.
Pearl farm developments across the Pacific are supported by a wide range
of environmental and development agencies, including the WorldFish Center
in Malaysia, Sea Grant College programme in the US-affiliated Pacific,
ACIAR (Australian Center for International Agricultural Research), and the
Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC-our publisher).
We believe so strongly in the power of the pearl to protect that Black
Pearls, Inc. eagerly compiled a comprehensive EIA for a pearl farm
proposal by the Cook Islands government to develop pearl farming in a
national park in the Cook Islands, in the remote lagoon of Suwarrow. We
believe that there is no incompatibility between the protected park status
and the pearl farm operation; indeed, the farm would have provided some
capability to enforce the national park management plan, and would have
afforded some level of protection for the fragile reef resources. We are
waiting to hear of the next move in this direction by the Cooks
government, or perhaps Suwarrow will be left languishing.
Green tinge to this POIB issue
Environmental consciousness grows apace. Bo Torrey's Pearl World (The
International Pearling Journal) recently focussed an entire issue on the
Pew Oceans Commission report, entitled "What's happening to our oceans".
The subtext of this issue was "So you love pearls? You need to be more
environmentally aware and active, or there may not be any more". Bo is to
be applauded for taking such an activist stance. There is not much in the
Pew report that relates directly to pearling, so rather than reprint large
sections of this issue here in POIB, we suggest that, if you are
interested, you write to Bo and ask him for a copy of that issue (Volume
12, No. 2). By the way, we still shamelessly lift excerpts from several
other Pearl World articles for our POIB, as usual. There is simply no
better source of information on what's moving, shaking, and breaking in
pearling.
The environmental impacts of pearling were recently a hot issue in New
South Wales, Australia, where the government fisheries agency and private
partners were proposing to expand some pilot-scale trials with the local
akoya-relative (Pinctada imbricata) in Port Stephens. This project earned
an initial thumbs-up from the environmental commissioner appointed to
adjudicate the project proposal. It now seems, however, that the opponents
have hounded the project to death.
In an attempt to provide some perspective (or perhaps just because it was
an interesting bit of science), the researchers working on this project
also recently published an article pointing out the powerful
bio-remediative potential of pearl oysters, particularly their ability to
remove heavy metals from polluted waters.
Closer to home, Black Pearls, Inc. has been working for several years on a
US Department of Defense research project to validate the use of P.
margaritifera as a heavy metal monitor. We publish excerpts from the
report of our first stage of this work; a second stage has just been
initiated.
This issue also refers to two articles on pearl oyster genetics, as they
relate to our environment (see "Other publications noted", p. 39). One
article from Mexico suggests that the uncontrolled plunder of the pearl
oyster beds in the last century has had a significant impact on population
structures of P. mazatlanica along the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The
other article assesses the impact of pearl farming on the genetic
variability of wild and cultured oysters in French Polynesian lagoons, and
gives a "green" light.
Two other noteworthy inclusions in this issue: In the Abstracts section
(p. 24), we provide a list of advance abstracts for the pearl sessions at
the upcoming World Aquaculture Society meeting in Honolulu, in March 2004.
Richard Fassler is billing this as the tenth anniversary of "Pearls '94 ".
We hope to see you there.
And in the News and Views section (p. 18), we start off with a wonderful
tirade from a very irate technician, berating your editor about my
"negative remarks about technicians (who) won't reveal operations
techniques, and the so-called exorbitant fees that they charge". This
letter was faxed in anonymously. If the author(s) had identified
themselves, and asked for my response, I might have pointed out that these
comments weren't mine. I write the editorials, and the occasional tirade
of my own (under my own byline), but the rest of the POIB consists of
contributions from other correspondents, or excerpts from other articles
published elsewhere. In this instance, the negative remarks about
technicians were included in an excerpt from a story in the Cook Islands
News. This article was itself paraphrasing Cook Islands pearl farmers'
comments. They said it; someone else wrote it down; we just copied it.
Anyone who knows us knows that we love our seeding technicians.....
When Terry Shepherd does his hunting, you can be sure that he has a higher environmental ethic than many other hunters. While most sportsmen pursue their game with a blatant disregard for the ground and water on which they travel, most hunters are supremely concerned for the survival of our planet. But the sheer act of hunting has been called into question--how can the taking of a life benefit the earth from an environmentalist and conservationist viewpoint?
Shepherd, owner of The Pearl Outlet and affectionately known as "The Pearl Hunter," hunts for a prey that is not only regarded for its monetary and aesthetic value, but also for the benefits that it imparts on communities throughout the world. "The Greening Industry of Pearls" is a reality, not a dream. It's a rare industry that benefits the earth--in other words, gives back more than it takes. When was the last time you knew of another industry segment that did the same?
One press release on this subject, issued by Pearls of Joy, can be found HERE.
And Neil Anthony Sims has written an insightful piece on this very issue, which we have republished here in its entirety. Thanks for reading.
The Green Pearl Issue
by: Neil Anthony Sims
...So, are pearl farms bad, benign, or beneficial? Years ago, we had
suggested to several individuals actively involved in environmental
conservation in the South Pacific that instead of (or as well as) setting
up a National Marine Park, they should set up a pearl farm. Our suggestion
was ignored, or dismissed, I guess. I've not heard of any pearl farms in
any Southeast Asian or Melanesian National Parks, but I still think it's a
stellar idea. The biological benefits are tremendous (all that wonderful
vertical relief for biomass to build up, and for fish recruitment), the
protection afforded coral reefs by a pearl farm's armed guards is
unimpeachable, and there is no other industry that provides such stable,
lucrative employment opportunities for isolated atolls. You have probably
heard all this before, but please allow me to restate the case for the
defence en toto.
The benefits from pearl farming
Pearl farming is an ideal development opportunity for remote communities.
It is a sustainable, lucrative industry, and in many cases it provides
both direct and indirect benefits to the environment. The direct benefits
are from reducing the pressure on stocks depleted by years of pearl shell
fishing, and fostering the recovery of pearl oyster populations. Indirect
benefits are in providing a viable, sustainable industry for rural areas
and isolated atolls, and in encouraging greater stewardship of marine
resources.
Pearl farming is eminently sustainable, from a stock management
perspective. In almost every pearling area in the world today, farming is
based on spat produced in hatcheries, or taken from artificial spat
collectors. The only continuing reliance on fishing of wild stocks for
farms is in northern and western Australia, where the collection of wild
oysters is a tightly regulated, stable fishery.
Pearl farms can help overfished stocks recover by acting as reproductive
nodes - aggregations of large, densely packed, well-tended adult oysters.
The large number of fecund oysters, in close proximity to each other,
results in better synchronisation of spawning, higher fertilisation rates,
and far greater numbers of viable larvae, compared to the conditions of a
depleted population, where oysters may be hundreds of meters, or even
miles, apart. In French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, stocks formerly
suffered from continual boom-and-bust fishing for the oysters, solely for
the value of the pearl shell. However, over the last few decades, since
the advent of large-scale farming in these atolls, spat falls and wild
oyster stocks have both increased dramatically. Black Pearls, Inc. has a
pending application for a pearl farm lease here in Hawaii that is largely
justified by the project being a public-private partnership: a pearl farm
and stock re-establishment programme rolled into one. The oysters on the
farm will be the broodstock that replenish the surrounding reefs with
Hawaii's imperilled endemic oyster.
Pearl farming is labour-intensive, and provides employment for both farm
workers and in spin-off secondary support industries. Pearl farming
thereby relieves pressure on other marine resources, such as reef
fisheries, that might otherwise be subject to unsustainable commercial
exploitation.
Pearl farming also encourages island communities towards greater
stewardship over their natural resources, and fosters reassertion of their
traditional tenure regimes. At a pearl farm in Palawan, Philippines, where
we have worked for about five years, the pearl farm areas were the only
ones where there was any reasonable coral reef left. Prior to the farm's
establishment, I was told, dynamite fishing was rampant throughout the
area. To this day, the reefs that lie outside of the range of the farm
guards' spotlights and AK-47s, are completely damaged. The reefs beneath
the pearl farm rafts and longlines are indescribably beautiful.
Pearl oysters are filter feeders, and require no supplementary feeding. In
areas of high water turbidity, the oysters may even improve water quality,
by clearing suspended particulates. The animals are highly susceptible to
any environmental perturbation, which is why farms are often located in
remote areas. Farmers therefore are often strong advocates for marine
environmental protection and management.
Pearl farm developments across the Pacific are supported by a wide range
of environmental and development agencies, including the WorldFish Center
in Malaysia, Sea Grant College programme in the US-affiliated Pacific,
ACIAR (Australian Center for International Agricultural Research), and the
Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC-our publisher).
We believe so strongly in the power of the pearl to protect that Black
Pearls, Inc. eagerly compiled a comprehensive EIA for a pearl farm
proposal by the Cook Islands government to develop pearl farming in a
national park in the Cook Islands, in the remote lagoon of Suwarrow. We
believe that there is no incompatibility between the protected park status
and the pearl farm operation; indeed, the farm would have provided some
capability to enforce the national park management plan, and would have
afforded some level of protection for the fragile reef resources. We are
waiting to hear of the next move in this direction by the Cooks
government, or perhaps Suwarrow will be left languishing.
Green tinge to this POIB issue
Environmental consciousness grows apace. Bo Torrey's Pearl World (The
International Pearling Journal) recently focussed an entire issue on the
Pew Oceans Commission report, entitled "What's happening to our oceans".
The subtext of this issue was "So you love pearls? You need to be more
environmentally aware and active, or there may not be any more". Bo is to
be applauded for taking such an activist stance. There is not much in the
Pew report that relates directly to pearling, so rather than reprint large
sections of this issue here in POIB, we suggest that, if you are
interested, you write to Bo and ask him for a copy of that issue (Volume
12, No. 2). By the way, we still shamelessly lift excerpts from several
other Pearl World articles for our POIB, as usual. There is simply no
better source of information on what's moving, shaking, and breaking in
pearling.
The environmental impacts of pearling were recently a hot issue in New
South Wales, Australia, where the government fisheries agency and private
partners were proposing to expand some pilot-scale trials with the local
akoya-relative (Pinctada imbricata) in Port Stephens. This project earned
an initial thumbs-up from the environmental commissioner appointed to
adjudicate the project proposal. It now seems, however, that the opponents
have hounded the project to death.
In an attempt to provide some perspective (or perhaps just because it was
an interesting bit of science), the researchers working on this project
also recently published an article pointing out the powerful
bio-remediative potential of pearl oysters, particularly their ability to
remove heavy metals from polluted waters.
Closer to home, Black Pearls, Inc. has been working for several years on a
US Department of Defense research project to validate the use of P.
margaritifera as a heavy metal monitor. We publish excerpts from the
report of our first stage of this work; a second stage has just been
initiated.
This issue also refers to two articles on pearl oyster genetics, as they
relate to our environment (see "Other publications noted", p. 39). One
article from Mexico suggests that the uncontrolled plunder of the pearl
oyster beds in the last century has had a significant impact on population
structures of P. mazatlanica along the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The
other article assesses the impact of pearl farming on the genetic
variability of wild and cultured oysters in French Polynesian lagoons, and
gives a "green" light.
Two other noteworthy inclusions in this issue: In the Abstracts section
(p. 24), we provide a list of advance abstracts for the pearl sessions at
the upcoming World Aquaculture Society meeting in Honolulu, in March 2004.
Richard Fassler is billing this as the tenth anniversary of "Pearls '94 ".
We hope to see you there.
And in the News and Views section (p. 18), we start off with a wonderful
tirade from a very irate technician, berating your editor about my
"negative remarks about technicians (who) won't reveal operations
techniques, and the so-called exorbitant fees that they charge". This
letter was faxed in anonymously. If the author(s) had identified
themselves, and asked for my response, I might have pointed out that these
comments weren't mine. I write the editorials, and the occasional tirade
of my own (under my own byline), but the rest of the POIB consists of
contributions from other correspondents, or excerpts from other articles
published elsewhere. In this instance, the negative remarks about
technicians were included in an excerpt from a story in the Cook Islands
News. This article was itself paraphrasing Cook Islands pearl farmers'
comments. They said it; someone else wrote it down; we just copied it.
Anyone who knows us knows that we love our seeding technicians.....
posted by Greg at 2:20 PM
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