Sunday, May 28, 2017

Where did this unusual color?

Motor boat docks to the wooden bungalows on stilts in the lagoon island of Huahine near the small village of Fare. Captain Smiley wants a good day for passengers and sails away. We find ourselves on a small platform next to a small wooden house, covered with palm leaves and branches. From bungalows, long arrows go to sea piers. In fact it is not at all the piers and platforms, which are attached to special nets full of pearl oysters. Here, on a small island lost in the Pacific Ocean, cultivated black pearls. 

"Lace - the finest imitation fantasy nature. A pearl is always right ", - claimed the great Koko Shanel. Earrings and ring with white freshwater pearls one can hardly surprise anyone. Where unusually Japanese pink or golden Australian pearls. But the rarest and unusual - black pearls from French Polynesia - French overseas territories in the South Pacific. Pearl farms are located in three of the five archipelagos of the region: The Gambia and the Tuamotus and Society Islands, to which refers Huahine. 

On the pearl farm is constantly working only three people: Tiare consultant, jeweler Vaymiti captain Reimann. Tiare leads us to a special booth to tell all about how there is a miracle of nature - the black pearl. According to Polynesian legend, pearls gave people the god of fertility Oro, who occasionally came down to earth on a rainbow and once fell in love with the princess with magical island of Bora Bora. To win the heart of beautiful, he presented her with an amazing gift - a black pearl, the iridescent colors of the rainbow. 

Where did this unusual color? The fact that only in French Polynesia lives a unique species of pearl oyster - Pinctada-margaritifera. This cranky clam not tolerates cold and die when the water temperature drops below 11 degrees Celsius. In addition, the oyster is very demanding on the composition and purity of the water and the microclimate of the surrounding waters. 

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