Pearl Diving

Pearl diving is the age old way to harvest these luminescent gems from the sea. This traditions is still continued today, although most pearls on the market are cultured and not natural, they still grow inside a mollusk and need to be retrieved from the water.

Pearl diving goes back over 5000 years and probably originated with the Chinese who valued the gem quite highly. Once this gem was introduced to Japan, Japanese women began to dive for pearls as well. When Kichimatsu Mikimoto perfected the cultured pearl in the early 1900's, his success was helped by the women pearl divers on Toba Island - and in fact, women are still employed as pearl divers there today!

Pearl diving is not for everyone. It can be dangerous and the body is not used to staying underwater for long periods of time. Divers may need to go down 200 feet or more and while most are safe from sea creatures, there could be a rare danger from sharks or other fish. Today, there are many pearl diving "tours" for scuba divers that one can take and perhaps find their own natural pearl!

Today, of course, the harvesting of cultured pearls has made pearl diving more of a hobby than an occupation. Pearls are formed when a foreign substance (either sand or a piece of shell or other small object) makes it's way inside a mollusk like an oyster or mussel. The mollusk secretes a substance called nacre and covers the object so it will be less irritating. As time goes on, more and more layers of nacre cover the object and a pearl is formed.

Kichimatsu Mikimoto found a way to force an irritant into a mollusk in the early 1900's. Pearls formed in this manner are called cultured pearls and are less valuable than pearls formed naturally. They are really the same thing as they are formed in the same way, but the culturing of pearls allows us to "grow" a pearl whenever we want instead of having to wait for it to occur naturally.

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