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Have You Seen Pearls Being Taken out from Oysters?

Like how Marilyn Monroe sings it, diamonds are a girl’s best friend. But what about the other best friend, pearls?

Now, we all know that pearls are harvested from oysters. What happens is that the oyster gets a sand particle or little pebble into its shell. It gets irritated the way you would when dust gets in your eye. You tear up as a result. The oyster “tears up” too, by secreting a pearly substance called “nacre” that coats up the sand particle overtime to form a pearl.

Have you ever seen pearls being taken out from oysters before? I don’t know about you, but I certainly haven’t!

Pearl oyster

We were at a department store where they had a pearl counter. The guy had piles of pearl oysters in front of him and he was harvesting pearls from them!

Pearl being harvested from an oyster

It looked to be a fairly easy and quick process. The guy was sitting back and looking incredibly bored as he was getting the beautiful pearls out of those oysters.

1) pry open the oyster.
2) flip over the tiny flap containing the pearl.
3) take out the pearl and cleanse it to get rid of the oyster stench.

The guy said that these were specially bred pearl oysters and it took 3 to 5 years for the oysters to turn the irritants into pearls. The pearls ranged in various colours (white, peach, golden), sizes and shapes. Apparently, the round ones are pretty rare. Oysters like their pearls to be oval in shape.

Pearl

There you go! A real pearl taken right out of a real oyster!

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About the Editor

Veron Ang is the Founder and Chief Editor of Sparklette, a Singapore restaurants guide, lifestyle and travel blog. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from the National University of Singapore and runs a web design firm at Sparklette Studio. To get in touch, head on over to the contact page or follow @Sparklette and @VeronSG on Twitter.

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Responses Leave a comment

DK
36 comments

Singapore departmental store? Which 1?
Reply
Posted February 24, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Maki
3 comments

Never seen a pearl harvested before so thanks for the closeups! The pearls look soo pretty :)
Reply
Posted February 24, 2007 at 1:48 pm
pkchukiss
82 comments

Just a thought: if a particle the size of a sand particle can irritate the oyster so much, then won’t creating a much bigger sized object out of a sand particle irritate it more?
Reply
Posted February 24, 2007 at 2:11 pm
kat
2 comments

i am wondering abt the authencity of the pearl though … isnt pearl suppose to be precious? the dept store is giving it out the shoppers with a low min. purchase, i think less than S$100?
Reply
Posted February 24, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Daphne
16 comments

according to this website, the bigger the irritant, the bigger the pearl.
but bigger pearls wil also form if the oysters are given more time to ‘grow’ before harvesting the pearl.
however, according to this website it says that the bigger the pearl, the more likely there will be irregularities on the pearl, such as missing chunks of nacre..
so, “perfect” big pearls are a rarity n therefore.. more expensive.. but the higher irregularities occurence is probably reason enough why culturers dont let pearls grow to such big sizes..
just my guess based on what i’ve read.. :)
Reply
Posted February 24, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Keropok Man
12 comments

hmmm did u accidently eat that pearl? haha…
Reply
Posted February 24, 2007 at 9:54 pm
py
183 comments

THis is interesting. Which departmental store is it? Sounds OG to me……
Reply
Posted February 24, 2007 at 10:29 pm
xxoos
14 comments

i love pearls~
and, yes, been to a pearl farm before.
i dont usually like gimmicks though.
Reply
Posted February 25, 2007 at 3:38 am
Veron
3439 comments

DK: It is OG. We were at the People’s Park branch.
Maki: No problem! It’s my first time seeing this live too!
pkchukiss: You mean put in a bigger pebble instead of a sand particle to create a bigger pearl?
kat: I think the pearls that are created without any human interference are more expensive. These particular oysters are bred specially to produce pearls.
Daphne: Thanks for the snippet of information! That explains why there are no giant pearls around.
Keropok Man: It hardly looked tantalising.
py: Yeah you are right! But I never knew that OG had such gimmicks.
xxoos: I wanna go to a pearl farm too!
Reply
Posted February 25, 2007 at 3:02 pm
mervkwok
38 comments

And unheard to the rest of us, a poor little oyster screams in pain as a pearl is removed from its tongue hehehe
Reply
Posted February 26, 2007 at 10:47 pm
dino
1 comment

i see now
thank you!
Reply
Posted February 28, 2007 at 7:14 pm
cindy j
1 comment

Where is People’s Park branch?
Reply
Posted January 20, 2009 at 1:44 am