Southgate, Paul C., Strack, Elisabeth, Hart, Anthony, Wada, Katsuhiko T., Monteforte, Mario, Cariño , Micheline, Langy, Sandra, Lo, Cedrik, Acosta-Salmon, Hector, and Wang, Aimin (2008) Exploitation and culture of major commercial species. In: Southgate, Paul C., and Lucas, John S., (eds.) The Pearl Oyster. Elsevier, Oxford, UK, pp. 303-355.

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Abstract

This chapter presents information on the history of exploitation and culture of the major commercial species of pearl oysters. Some of these species have very long and colorful histories of exploitation that, in some cases, are inexorably linked with economic and cultural development of a region. For example, the lure of the "Pearl Myth" and exploitation of Pinetada mazatlanica in the Gulf of California provided the major impetus for Spanish colonization and exploitation of the region. While exploitation of natural pearl oyster populations led in many cases to over-fishing and the collapse of these populations, development of techniques for cultured round pearl production in the early 1900s provided the basis for a global cultured pearl industry with a current value of about US$0.5 billion per annum. This chapter provides information on cultured pearl production from the major commercial species and outlines problems encountered by these industries and bottlenecks to production. This chapter also presets broad information on the culture methods used for pearl oysters and the reader is referred to Chapter 7 for more detail of these methods.

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