For at least 164,000 years, oysters have been part of the human diet, but people have been finding pearls in oysters for much ...

Pearls within a pearl oyster shell. Pearl oysters are important products in Japan, as they produce beautiful pearls that are sought after for necklaces, earrings, and rings. Disclaimer ...

A retractable foot, a siphon for sucking up water, powerful muscles, and, sometimes, a pearl ... Like oysters and mussels, clams are bivalves, a kind of mollusk that's encased in a shell made ...

akoya oyster populations should return to health, probably by the year 2002. Thinning may solve the problem, Müller says, because lower shell density usually results in a higher quality pearl.

Mother-of-pearl is the hard ... especially oysters, the large varieties of which in the Indian Seas secrete this coat of sufficient thickness to render the shell an object of manufacture.

Lapping green waters fringe the Kujukushima Islands off the coast of Sasebo in Nagasaki. Fields of pearl oysters sleep just beneath their surface. The shell beds are farmed by Tasaki, the Japanese ...

A great irony of pearl history ... yellow or even black. In response to contemporary preferences, they now offer a selection of subtle natural colors. Nucleating an oyster. The Chinese have ...

What is a natural pearl, and how are they formed? Natural pearls form when some kind of irritant, usually a small organism, makes its way into the shell of a mollusk like an oyster or a mussel.

The oyster or mussel slowly secretes layers of aragonite and conchiolin, materials that also make up its shell. This creates a material called nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, which encases the ...

In response, the mantle secretes layers of nacre, the same material that forms the oyster's shell, around the irritant. Over time, these layers accumulate, creating a pearl. The nacre layers are ...