Savusavu Bay is home to one of Fiji's biggest black pearl farms. Photo / Getty Images
Savusavu Bay is home to one of Fiji's biggest black pearl farms. Photo / Getty Images
Paul Rush discovers the enigmatic beauty and brilliance of black pearls in the waters of Fiji.
Black is the new gold in the South Pacific - lustrous black pearls, that is. They are arrestingly beautiful and much sought after. In the last few years the islands of Tahiti, the Marquesas, Fiji and Rarotonga have become the world's leading exporters of black pearls.
I have travelled to Savusavu Bay, on Fiji's second island of Vanua Levu, to unlock the secrets of the love affair with a mysterious oyster, the pinctada margaritifera. Somehow, this clever mollusc transforms a very irritating implant into a precious soft gem. It's the only oyster able to create pearls of specific colours.
Fiji's little "hidden paradise" of Savusavu is like a slow-moving island settlement of the mid-20th century. The town was originally established as a centre for sailing ships trading in sandalwood, beche-de-mer and copra. Today, it's a picture-perfect jewel case that holds one of nature's most striking gems.
The town's main landmark is the Copra Shed and jetty, built in 1917 by the Planter's Co-op and later taken over by the Morris Hedstrom company as a trading store. My tour leaves the jetty for a 10-minute ride out to the oyster farm, where tens of thousands of black pearl oysters are suspended on buoyed ropes in a grid pattern.
At a floating pontoon, two strapping men are hauling up long strings of astonishingly large oysters, easily covering a man's hand. The men are painstakingly cleaning the algae and barnacle growth off the outer shells to protect them from harmful organisms. It takes six months to clean the 900 lines, then it is time to restart the process.
We soon arrive at the main processing shed. Two workers are attaching live oysters to rope lines. Japanese scientists come twice a year to inspect the implantation work and oversee harvesting. I'm staggered by the complexity of the operation.
The precious molluscs need a lot of tender loving care. The scientists locate the reproductive gonad and carefully make a scalpel incision just large enough to insert a 6mm spherical bead made of Mississippi River mussel shell. This little white bead will be the nucleus of a new black pearl, provided the oyster detects the irritant and co-operates by coating it with nacre, also known as mother of pearl.
The pearl harvesting shed at Savusavu Bay. Photo / Paul Rush
The Savusavu farm has another little trick up its sleeve. To produce their special gold-coloured pearls, they look for a mature donor oyster that has a gold mantle, or skirt, around the outer edge of the shell. They cut 50 sections off the mantle and insert a tiny piece of this tissue into the gonad with each white bead, thus tricking the recipient oysters into producing a golden-hued pearl.
Once they leave the "operating theatre" after their non-anaesthetic surgery, the hardy little molluscs have two years in which to either reject the irritant or produce a pearl.
The creatures demonstrate their wilful independence by rejecting 50 nuclei from the outset and produce just three perfect pearls for every 100 implants.
At the J. Hunter Pearl showroom in Savusavu township, I'm spellbound by the colour range of the so-called black pearls. The glossy, reflective surfaces clearly show brilliant hues of blue, green, champagne, copper and the rare, precious burnished gold. These pastel pearls are found nowhere else in the world.
This small company in the remote South Pacific is creating quite a buzz. Europe's finest jewellery brands are clamouring for their cultured pearls.
The sales assistant brings out a pure gold specimen that has a truly mesmerising lustre. A holidaying couple from New Zealand are equally captivated and decide to invest $1600 and buy the sparkling beauty.
Kokichi Mikimoto first mastered the technique of cultivating pearls in the early 1990s. Natural pearls had previously been extremely rare and very expensive.
Marine biologist and entrepreneur, Justin Hunter, established Fiji's first pearl farm in this bay in the year 2000. His big dream to produce something quite different from traditional pearls, in distinctive hues and larger sizes, has now been realised.
Kiwis are still learning about the tropical delights of Savusavu. It's an ideal place for a holiday for people in love with nature and each other. There's the added bonus of acquiring one of nature's little miracles, a set of pearls of sheer perfection and luminous beauty. The secret of the mother of all pearls has now been revealed.
Pearl quality
Real black pearls of fine quality should always feel quite weighty and cool. To feel their coolness it is best to run them across the back of your hand. To test for the genuine product, rub the pearl along the soft flesh of the cheek and it should feel slightly gritty, not smooth. Using the teeth is not recommended as molars are two on the Mohs Scale of Hardness and pearls are three (diamonds are 10). The best way to determine the nacre thickness of a black pearl is with an x-ray, which some specialist pearl shops have.
Getting there:Air New Zealand flies daily from Auckland to Nadi, Fiji. Savusavu is a one-hour flight from Nadi on the island of Vanua Levu. It has accommodation to suit all budgets and a peaceful get-away-from-it-all ambience that is ideal for honeymooners and eco-tourists.
