Diving for pearls
While in Zihuatanejo, Mexico my kids captured these photos of pearl divers.
Known for its beautiful beaches and diverse marine life, it's not a primary location for pearl diving, and is better known for scuba diving and snorkeling to explore reefs and witness various marine species.
Today very few natural pearls are recovered from wild oysters due to many years of overfishing. Modern pearl production relys more on pearl farming and pearls are produced with human help
How do oysters make pearls?
Pearls are made by marine oysters and freshwater mussels as a natural defence against an irritant such as a parasite entering their shell or damage to their fragile body.
The oyster or mussel slowly secretes layers of aragonite and conchiolin, materials that also make up its shell. This creates a material called nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, which encases the irritant and protects the mollusc from it.
When pearls are cultured commercially an irritant is manually inserted into a mollusc to promote the production of mother-of-pearl.
Nacre can form naturally around almost any irritant that gets inside the shell, creating some very unique and precious pearls.
Other bivalve molluscs and gastropods can produce pearls, but these aren't made of nacre.
This was the process on the beach that was set up to wash sand from oysters and clams before they were to be eaten
Ecency gifs created by @irisworld are available in the Ecency discord #assets channel and are free to use.
Wow, that was really amazing, mom, it was a really fun dive, the view of the beach was also really amazing ❤️❤️
Thanks for the comment and the vote! I appreciate it!
!INDEED
I have seen it but never tried it. Some photos show that they are very professional in diving.
And I also just found out how oysters create pearls, it's amazing, have a nice day Mom♥️🙏
Thanks for curating! I didn't know much about pearls until I read about them for this post. I live far from the sea and was not familiar with how they are produced
!INDEED
!PIZZA
And the information you get is the right information Mom
Hug🙏♥️
Namaste🙏 Ma'am, Nice photography, i think natural pearl is costlier than the artificial pearl.
!INDEED !PIZZA
I think you are right. I have never owned real pearls.
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The talent of these people is commendable.
I'm glad you enjoyed how they do it!
It seems like an amazing process!
What beautiful beaches...
Greetings @melinda010100 , spectacular photos and a wonderful story. Pearl production and harvesting is an art that enhances a woman's beauty...a big hug.
Thanks! Pearls are lovely, aren't they?
!PIZZA
@melinda010100 Greetings, a big hug, of course, and I think that every woman is a wonderful pearl in herself.
Well even if pearls are rare, oysters are still yummy. I miss the seafood from when we lived in California. I guess I need to start thinking about a trip over to Maine 🙂
I hate not being able to travel to fresh seafood anymore!
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Pearls are actually rare, statistically speaking. The bigger the pearl the lower the chances of it naturally occurring, and the round shape is also not that frequent in nature. Because of all of that today most pearls are farmed, and the irritant used is a perfectly round bead. In the end the farmed ones are cheaper, and that can be good or bad depending on the eye of the beholder.
You seem to know a lot about the subject!
Not actually. I have seen my share of documentaries, read some books, but no actual "hands on" knowledge. To the best of my knowledge, there are no pearl mollusks on the seas around Cuba.
Very cool! Something I have never done before, but oysters never were my favorite ocean treat! I usually free dove for rock lobsters on the reefs of the Caribbean. I know most are farmed now, at one point even considered starting up my own in addition to some other fish farming inland in the US but funding fell through... bummer! I imagine it has been overfished big time off of Mexico, when you have to make a living you do what you have to do.
Great photos they got there on their trip, too bad they couldn't dive in and try for themselves. But free diving takes a lot of experience, I used to be able to hold my breathe for 3 minutes once upon a time........ To be in my 20's again! Thanks for sharing the great pictures, I've been itching to dive for treasure again for a long time now!
I love lobster and oysters and can imagine how wonderful it would be to eat them that fresh!
Unless I have them shipped in, it's pretty impossible to have fresh seafood of any sort here.
I am reading 'Surviving Savannah". Actually listening to it. It is based on a true story. It centers around the Steamship Pulaski, a luxury steamship that sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, with the wreckage discovered 180 years later. I'm fascinated by the treasures the divers in the book are finding.
That's the only kind of diving I can do these days.
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What a wonderful experience!!! It is unusual to witness pearl cultivation. Amazing photos by the way
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the photos!
I was always curious about how long they can stay deep in the ocean? Fantastic shots!
!BBH
I found this..... 3 to 5 minutes, while elite freedivers can achieve breath-hold times exceeding 10 minutes.
Wow...10 minutes!
!INDEED
No way! 10 minutes! Mind blowing! It should be super hard to keep the breath deep in the ocean even for a minute but 10 minutes!....
!BBH !PIZZA
No wonder pearl can be expensive.
But I am not reallyy a fan of oyster, maybe it is not a common food for a person who grow up in the slope of the mountain quite far from the sea. !LOLZ !PIZZA !LUV
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I didn't grow up near the sea either, but I love to eat oysters! In stew, or rolled in cracker crumbs and fried. Purchasing them here is expensive though, so I don't get to have them often.
Wow, this is really an amazing moment to be able to witness the diving process directly even though it is not the main place, your son is really lucky and very observant in capturing this beautiful moment. His shots prove that the underwater world always has interesting stories.
Going to the sea like this is a dream because many people are afraid and cannot enjoy these sights and these movements.
There is so much beauty under the water! It is an amazing experience.
!LUV
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Wooow
Great writing on pearls
Didn’t even know they could be made this way…the divers have to diver deep into the ocean to get them..
Oyster shells are washed up on the beach shores every now am then over here, guess the ones already eaten up by predators
Excelentes fotos tomadas por tus chicos. El mar está lleno de maravillas y sorpresas. 😘