000 inhabitants.

Beyond the magnificent jewel, beyond learn more the beauty of the myriad of colors, lusters and shapes, beyond the prized value, beyond the unique human culture and know-how found around pearl farms, black pearls are fascinating for scientists because they represent the ultimate product of both an exploited lagoon ecosystem and an exploited bivalve, the black lip oyster Pinctada margaritifera (Linnaeus, 1758) var. cumingii (Jameson, 1901). Pearl production has always been challenging for the suite of numerous factors and processes that need to be understood and mastered before a black pearl materialize in the hand of a farmer. Throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th century, P. margaritifera oysters were harvested by free-divers only for the nacre, and button, industry. Sometimes, natural black pearls were found. In French Polynesia, in 1961, the first attempt to graft oysters with the goal of producing cultivated round pearls was successfully achieved in Hikueru atoll by Jean-Marie Domard and Churoku Muroi. The first farm was established in Manihi atoll in 1968. The two following decades saw the slow rise of a new commercial activity with production in Tuamotu and Gambier archipelagos

(e.g., Marutea Sud), with black pearls acquiring the status of high quality gems in international jewellery markets. By the end of the eighties, both archipelagos experienced a black pearl rush, with thousands of Polynesian and foreigners workers returning to remote atolls. Hundreds of new concessions were granted per year on a variety of lagoons. Production rose quickly. Experiments of all kind followed to achieve the most efficient collecting www.selleckchem.com/products/PF-2341066.html and farming possible, often in logistically challenging remote conditions. Spat collecting was critical. Indeed, the pearl industry required before all the

provision of oysters. They were initially harvested from wild stocks, and spat collecting developed rapidly in suitable lagoons to steadily provide to farmers the oysters needed eltoprazine for grafting. Enhanced farming practices yielded an average successful rate of 300–400 sellable pearls for 1000 grafted oysters. On the other hand, transfers of oysters between atolls were frequent, making local populations and lagoons vulnerable to extinction, diseases, and spread of invasive epibionts species. Dedicated governmental services were created to manage and monitor the environmental and socio-economic consequences of what was virtually an entire new field of economic activity coming out of the blue of the Tuamotu and Gambier lagoons. Quickly, despite the growing empirical knowledge developing among farmers, better knowledge of lagoon ecosystem functioning and suitability for pearl farming were needed. This included better knowledge on the physiology of P. margaritifera. Scientific research programs were launched, and both lagoon ecosystems and organisms came under the scrutiny of applied and fundamental studies.