Freshwater Pearls are cultured pearls mostly from China made in a freshwater mussel in a lake, pond, river or reservoir. They are similar in look to the Akoya pearls. The followings are the true stories from our farm. You will have more knowledge after you read them through.

When the mussels are about six months old, the insertion operation starts taking place. Technicians insert mantle pieces into the shells at about thirty-four pieces a shell, seventeen each side in three row. We call it six-five-six permutation. The future pearl quality is very much depends on the insertion quality. If the mantle piece is too close to the shell, the future pearl will touch and stuck with the shell during its growing, and it will not be pearl when harvest. However if the mantle piece is too far from the shell, the future pearls shape will not be round (there are more button, drop and irregular shapes) which has less value than round one. There are other facts related pearls qualities such as the distance between mantle pieces. So far there is no measurement for those operations. It all relies on technicians experience. At its harvest few years later we always find the percentage of round pearls from total is different.

After insertion operation, we put the mussels into a net which is hang on a rope about 40-50cm under the water level. Usually five mussels are in a net. When its three years, we need to take two mussels out and leave three in the net due to the mussels size are larger and limited space will slow their growing speed.
May is the high risk month to have the illness for mussels. All the pearl farmers took extra care of mussels during that month. June, July, August and September are mussels fast-grow period. Ponds need more nutrition but lager area lakes are always rich enough especially in inland provinces lake.

A piece of 8mm round pearl takes four years to form. Now Freshwater Pearls size reaches 13mm even larger. It takes longer year, but a mussel older than eight to ten years, it has more chance to die or drop the pearls off.

Harvest is a very exciting activity. People open the mussels and pull out all pearls with meat together. It takes long time to wash off those meats. Usually there is at least thirty people join the activity during the harvest in our farm, and takes several days to complete the work.

Compare Freshwater Pearl with other pearls such as South Sea, Tahitian and Akoya pearls, the Freshwater Pearl has no bead inside. Thick layer is the advantage of Freshwater Pearl. We can only see a very tiny hole in the middle when we chop off a piece of pearl. That is the space from the dried mantle originally inserted.

Nowadays, our farm takes many practices and tries many different ways to increase the pearl size, luster and speed up the growing processes, including insert the real bead to result better round shape pearl and reduce the pearl forming time. We believe in the near future Freshwater Pearls will have better quality than other pearls including larger size, stronger luster and more natural colors.

If you would like to have an exciting experience visiting our pearl farm and learn more about freshwater pearls, please contact us at service@pacificpearl.com.cn, we will make a pre-arrangement to let you have an unforgettable excellent time.

Pacific Pearl Shanghai Pty. Ltd.