Perle Champion

Day 14 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today’s letter is N

N is for Nature’s Nascent Nacre

nascent nacre balm
a creature’s comfort failing is
man’s unlikely gem

© Perle Champion

Nature’s Nascent Nacre, is a balm that provides some short-lived ease to the oyster while it lives.  Unfortunately, as with many of nature’s wonders, man put a price on the unlikely gems, and killed to find their prize.

Now that pearls are farmed, it’s perhaps a bit more humane, than murdering thousands to find very few natural pearls, but not much. (see PETA excerpt below)

© Perle Champion

This from Peta:

Culturing involves surgically opening each oyster shell and inserting an irritant in the oyster. Freshwater pearls are cultured by inserting another oyster’s mantle tissue. Saltwater pearls have beads and another oyster’s mollusk tissue inserted. Fewer than half of the oysters may survive this process.

Cultivators further stress the oysters by suspending them in water in a cage, washing their shells, moving them around in different waters, and raising and lowering their cages to subject them to changing water temperatures.

After the pearls are extracted from the oysters, one-third of oysters are “recycled” and put through the culturing process again. The others are killed and discarded.

For those concerned about the environment, there is another reason to avoid pearls. Aquaculture has contributed to destruction of natural pearl oyster beds from pollution and overharvesting.

Of course, with so many modern pearl imitations, as well as other kinds of jewelry, it’s easy to do without pearls.