Time lapse of Josh grafting (seeding pearl oysters) at Kamoka
Because they are raised, not mined, pearls can be the most ecologically responsible gem you can buy. Not all pearls are 100 percent natural or sustainably produced however so it’s important to know where your pearls come from.
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December holidays at Kamoka have never been “Christmassy” in the classic sense, but we created our own traditions that became so, at least to us. Atoll celebrations aren’t easy to arrange -- it takes months of planning to get food and gifts on the supply ship. One year the boat came a few days late so we had to push Christmas forward until it showed up.
Most people on Ahe cut down an ironwood tree, found on a few islets quite far from ours, as a Christmas tree, but we decided to use what we had on our land. We chose a hardy bush called miki miki (Pemphis acidula). Instead of chopping down a whole massive plant, we go out with the kids much like people in colder countries go out in the woods, to find the perfect bushy miki miki bough. Once we cut the “tree” (ideally about 5ft high) off the bush, we stick it in an old cabin biscuit tin filled with coral gravel. Voila, an Ahe Christmas tree.
To decorate our “tree” we collect old shells on the beach and paint or color them before hanging them on the Yuletide miki miki with colorful strings of old pearling cord that have washed up on the beach. We also make a few paper ornaments including a star for the top. We save the really good decorations for the next year but the ornaments rarely make it through more than two seasons.
We also decorate the shells of hermit crabs. These critters are very fashion conscious so we suspect that this is a treat for them too. We collect crabs from the beach then color and decorate their shells with Sharpies. Then we set the crabs free back where we found them. Weeks later, we smile every time we cross paths with our familiar friends.
On Christmas Eve the farm gets decorated with giant coconut palm fronds that we weave around the posts that hold up the farm. We use halved ones to line the rafters and roof edge to create a long, green fringe. Palm frond decorations mean party to island people so this is a tradition that never gets overlooked.
Then everyone gets cooking. Some years we’ve had a pig or a goat, but most years it’s all about fish. The traditional Ahe Christmas fish is Napoleon fish but since “pigs of the sea” (so fatty!) are not always available, yellow fin tuna often fits the bill. We drink champagne, wine and Tahiti Drink (a sort of Mai Tai concoction sold in cartons at supermarkets on Tahiti), hook up the stereo and get dancing. The Ventures Christmas album usually joins the upbeat and very danceable, ukulele-infused local music. Feasting usually happens late since Polynesians like to finish drinking before they eat. Drinking ends when the supply of alcohol does so hang-overs are often cured with tasty left-overs.
Christmas morning we open gifts and stockings. There is always a bit of wonder as to how different items arrived there undetected. We cook again but eat a more simple meal or even just left-over’s, depending on the degree of partying that happened on Christmas Eve.
Whether you are surrounded in snow, coconut trees or somewhere in between, we wish you a Christmas season filled with the love of family and friends.
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As a child, growing up on Ahe, the stories of paranormal activity were common. It never occurred to me to doubt the existence of the spirit world but, having never had any brush with it, I had no reason to believe in it either. However from age of 21 to 30 I lived on the atoll full time and in that span, was witness to several encounters. I was once woken up by a bed that pulsed like a human heart and on another occasion was jolted awake by the explosion of a jerry can full of water being flung across the room in the dark of night. The story below involves Celeste, and I chose it because the setting and circumstances help to tie the story to pearl farming in the early years, something we (and especially Celeste) will be writing much of in the future.
It had been a long day of pearl grafting. This time I wasn’t at Kamoka and instead found myself cleaning my tools and organizing my equipment at Rose’s house. Rose’s house was 4km due south around the atoll from our farm. I was there doing some seeding for her farm during a rare moment of down time at Kamoka.
Rose is extended family who we have known since our arrival in Ahe by sailboat in the early seventies. Her grandmother Mama Fana, raised Rose. Mama Fana lead the effort of the villagers there to extend a warm welcome to innumerable visitors on sailboats. Ahe is on the way from the Marquesas to Tahiti so that makes it a natural stopping point in addition to its ideal anchorage and friendly locals. From Mama Fana, Rose learned how to effortlessly make people feel like they belonged.
Rose’s grace and easy smile reveals her generous nature and service to others. Her husband and two young girls lived with her on one of the most stunning motus, or islets of the entire atoll. They had cleared the understory of brush so the white sand under the grove of coconut trees melted perfectly into the white of the beach and lagoon. The color of the water transitions from light blue to turquoise to deep blue. The deep blue is fringed by colorful corals that come almost to the surface and form a broad protective arm that waves from the predominant east wind break on. The unlikely natural marina has resulted in a sublime, flat water bathing pool, our favorite of the entire atoll.
The next day was Sunday so work was done until Monday. The day came to an end and we enjoyed a meal of chicken and pea stew over rice accompanied by Rose’s legendary coconut bread.
Atolls are at sea level so horizons are vast and days start early. Everyone had been up since before dawn as is customary in many pearl farms. Because of this, internal rhythms keep evenings short and Celeste and I were soon asleep in the bed we had been given. I have a talent for falling asleep instantly and not moving for the majority of the night and this night was no exception.
Early the next morning we awoke to a glassy calm without a breath of wind. Unlike high islands, the weather and temperature on atolls are regulated by the ocean, not land mass. Much the same as it is on a sailboat, weather systems blow over atolls without stalling since there is almost no land mass to hold them. Because of this, temps remain incredibly constant night and day and throughout the year. It never gets hot because of the constant wind. Or almost constant wind. This particularly morning the sun, despite being so low on the horizon, was already scorching. Before having breakfast we walked straight to the beach for a swim in the relatively cool 80° water.
Celeste let herself down in the water and instantly jumped up, crying out in pain. She had long, red scratches on both sides of her body on her inner thighs and her chest. The saltwater stung the superficial cuts that were disturbingly on erogenous zones on her body. I thought that she must have done it to herself so I inspected every one of her nails for irregularities that could account for this. I was hardly surprised to find nothing at all. She had been there for several months already and long hours working with pearl oysters had reduced her nails to nearly nothing. In addition to that, she has a lifelong habit of keeping her nail edges perfect. She had never scratched herself in her sleep before (or since for that matter). Despite the tropical swelter, we both found ourselves chilled and uneasy.
We walked back to the house and told Rose about it. She frowned and explained that her uncle, affectionately known as Papa’u (grandfather) had died in the house some months earlier and that a number of events had taken place that in Western terms could only be described as supernatural. Papa’u had a penchant for mischief when he was in this world and it was a natural assumption that his spirit would share the same proclivities.
We were told that if we were ever confronted with his ghost or disturbed by it’s apparent presence, that we should curse and yell at it, the more vile the better. The spirit world needs to be put in it’s place and through words you can do that, we were told.
This was one of several encounters we had with the supernatural. These kind of stories seem outlandish from a Western perspective. As I write this from my computer, I can only imagine how people must process it. One’s perspective changes however with cultural context. The culture on Ahe is the original one, in some ways identical to the one that was brought there by the first Polynesians who arrived in sailing canoes from Eastern Asia several hundred years earlier. Some say that the spirit world is stronger where there is less civilization. From our experience, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
Photo by Lisa Zick-Mariterangi
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by Josh Humbert
Moving to Portland, Oregon from Tahiti has been predictably full of change. One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most is the opportunity to grow food that (unlike me) would never put up with 80 degrees fahrenheit 24/7 365 days a year.
Learning about growing apples, pears, blueberries, hazelnuts, etc has lead me down a path of discovery of how much farming food can be like farming Tahitian pearls when done in a way that is sensitive to the environment. Permaculture especially, grabbed me the most. It is defined by Wikipedia, as “a system of agricultural and social design principles centered on simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems.” Read ahead to discover how these concepts also apply to how we farm pearls at Kamoka.
The way that we imitate nature when farming pearls in our lagoon ecosystem can best be seen in how we clean our oysters. To do so, we bring them to fish-dense areas to be nibbled clean. The number of fish species are numerous that benefit from this work because the oysters become unwilling hosts to just about everything that grows in a lagoon. Our oysters, like the hull of a boat neglected at anchor, get covered in innumerable and always changing species. Diverse food leads to divers predators of that food. That prevents single species from outcompeting others and the result is a rich, diverse lagoon. By bringing our oysters into shallow areas to be cleaned, we allow this natural mechanism to occur.
Another way that pearl oyster farming enriches lagoons is by having our oysters in close proximity of each other. This isn’t proprietary to Kamoka and indeed this is true for many kinds of shellfish farming. Oysters are broadcast spawners meaning that they they release their gametes (male or female) into the water to randomly find each other. The proximity leads to highly successful reproduction. The young oysters that result from that, settle to the lagoon floor and most are eaten by fish but some find safe places to hide, increasing the stock of wild oysters in the lagoon. Pearl oysters world wide were decimated by the boom of the button industry as well as the insane search for natural pearls, that continues to this day.
So the way we clean our oysters helps to mitigate the effects of overfishing and the successful spawning that results from our work helps to slowly bring back decimated wild stocks.
Are there any other gems in the world that can be considered regenerative to the environment like this?
This video was made at Kamoka couple years ago but it's a great windo into what it's like to farm pearls with sustainability in mind:
Josh's favorite pun is that an "atoll" isn't an island "at all." And it's true. These tropical rings of coral glow dull amber, white and green around brilliant turquoise lagoons and are comprised mostly of the seawater they envelop, not their sandy, dead coral-strewn land. There are 120 of these beauties in French Polynesia's Tuamotu Archipelago and hundreds more are scattered across Polynesia and the world's tropical seas.
The first time I came to Ahe I had no idea that atolls looked anything like this. I'd heard of them in geology class, but those descriptions had left me with a fuzzy image of a lush high island with a hole in the middle, not these flat, shrubby, amorphous shaped rings. It was as if my education had duped me: why didn't we learn more about atolls in school? Why aren't there pictures of these paradises up in every travel agent's office around the planet? It astounds me that most people will never get to see an atoll and that I could easily have missed them too. In my opinion atolls are one of the most beautiful geologic formations on Earth.
Charles Darwin must have been equally awed when he voyaged to the Coco and Keeling Atolls in the Indian Ocean in 1836 aboard the H.M.S Beagle. On this voyage Darwin theorized that these ring-shaped "islands" are the barrier reefs that once surrounded volcanic high islands that sank and eroded into the lagoon over hundreds of thousands of years.
The process according to Darwin goes like this: An island is formed by a volcano. Over millennium, coral reef grows on the island's underwater slope. Once the reef has built up to near the surface, pieces break off and pile up on top of each other during storms and big swells. This creates dry land that peeks out above the surface of the highest tides. This broken, dead coral breaks down into sand and limestone cement that creates a hard land surface called a "cay" in English. Eventually small islets are formed in a linked chain with shallow waterways between them. Water flows in and out of the waterways, called hoa in Tahitian, from the ocean to the lagoon. When a waterway is deep enough to be navigable by boat, it's called a pass. Meanwhile the volcanic island in the middle slowly sinks and erodes till it disappears completely into the lagoon. The whole geologic process from volcano to atoll apparently takes around 30 billion years.
This theory sounded a bit far out to other scientists back in the 1800s and other theories of how these bizarre circular islands formed were argued about in institutions of higher learning for about 100 years. Then in 1951, during the era of nuclear testing, the American-run Atomic Energy Commission in the Marshall Islands drilled down 4154 feet under Eniwetok Atoll. They hit volcanic rock. Yup, there was an island under there and Darwin was proved right. Having lived on an atoll I can also back Darwin up: every time a big swell hits Ahe massive chunks of dead coral are thrown up onto the reef and far inland creating more landmass.
But atoll formation doesn't end with coral and rock. While the atoll is forming and becoming landmass, seeds floating through the ocean wash ashore and sprout vegetation in the sand. Sea birds come to nest, leaving guano (a powerful fertilizer) that mixes with the decayed shrubs and sand to create dirt. In reality, even after these natural processes, most islets on atolls have terrible - if any - soil but there are usually a few vaguely fertile islets where plants can actually thrive. Our motu on Ahe has little soil or sand and is covered mostly with coral gravel, coconut palms and local shrubs. It wouldn't have been habitable for humans in the days before supply ships.
Despite its inhospitable aspects for gardening, atolls are ideal for farming oysters and thus, culturing pearls. Oysters thrive in a nutrient-poor environment so the lack of soil and minerals draining into their water is a boon. The remoteness of Ahe and the small human population means the water is also clean and pure. The atoll acts as an enclosure from the ocean that makes it possible to hang lines, build structures and farm. While the lagoon can get rough, it's nothing compared to the swells and storms in the ocean ocean so our atoll acts like a protected nest where we can create our beautiful gems from the sea.
Text by Celeste Brash, photos by Josh Humbert, copyright 2016
Please ask for permission to use text or photos. Thanks!
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The desire to farm Tahitian pearls begins with a dream, which then transforms into reality. This reality is made up first of heavy investment, then strenuous work, then more investment, then more work and so on until the harvest of those first pearls. This could be four or more years after setting out in the first place.
Even after all the hard work and investment there is no guarantee or promise of pearls. They could all be eaten by leopard rays or green turtles off the lines they grow on. Or sickness could strike your oysters down, just days away from harvesting. Worse yet, the pearls could be stolen while still in the water or after being harvested. These are all things I’ve experienced whether directly or through the pain of fellow farmers.
The investment a Tahitian pearl farmer has in each and every pearl can scarcely be quantified. Unlike freshwater pearls that are cultivated many to the same bivalve, Tahitian pearls are born alone in each oyster. For the success of the operation, it’s vital that the farmer cares for each oyster. This care is then passed on to the pearl.
Now imagine yourself as this farmer who has struggled against the odds to produce their pearls. You take your pearls to Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. The airfare alone will cost you about USD600 if you are coming from the far-flung southern islands. You will then need to secure a hotel room for the week you plan to stay and sell your pearls. By the time you are back home you will have spent more than a month’s wage for incidental travel.
You get lucky and find a foreign buyer and agree on a price. Now you have to take your pearls to the Maison de la Perliculture for export procedures. There you are greeted by a friendly staff of busy people who are in a whir of activity with other farmer’s pearls. There are several huge machines with radiation warnings on them that your pearls will go into. A technician inspects every single pearl of your 1,000 pearl lot. Fifty of them get put aside before the rest is sealed in a bag with the documents that your buyer will need for export.
Amongst the 50 pearls there are two that you recognize, one a rare blue peacock and the other an equally rare gold with no green tinge. You clench your teeth when you think about where these beauties will end up.
Since 1998 it has been mandated that all pearls exported have a minimum nacre (pearl shell material) thickness of 0.8mm on each side of the nucleus. Pearls that fall short, even at 0.75mm are confiscated and ground into powder.
There has always been controversy about this but I support it. I think it is one of the few good things the Tahitian government has done in managing the pearl industry. It allows us as a nation to set ourselves apart from competing black pearl industries such as the Cook Islands or Fiji.
I am proud of our thick nacred pearls as I know that they can be worn for many, many years. That lets me sleep well at night and dream of other things.
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We finished up our mid-day meal and like usual, I put a kettle of hot water on the stove for tea and coffee. On the farm in the Tuamotus, it rarely gets hotter or colder than 85° year-round. That’s the temperature of the lagoon water, which keeps things incredibly constant. A hot beverage was more about prolonging our meal than anything else. Like any kind of farming, our work was almost sure to be physically demanding. As soon as lunch was over we would be back at it until the end of the day.
As we were waiting for the water to boil we heard a clatter come from the food closet. The door was open and a giant rat thudded to the floor. This was impossible. The farm is a football field’s distance from the land. If it had swum all the way out there, it had risked getting eaten by sharks, groupers, eels and a whole host of other hungry denizens of our coral atoll. Impossible or not, the Houdini rat was there on the floor, it’s black, beady eyes full of panic.
Almost immediately afterwards, our farm cat Toerau jumped after in hot pursuit. Toerau was an elegant calico with the short hair that characterizes cats in warm climates. She caught up to it in no time but her slender frame halted abruptly in front of the intruder. It was a lot of rat and she was visibly unsure what to do next. I had found her as a kitten, soaked and terrified under some wet cardboard at a neighbor’s farm in the middle of a cyclone. Toerau means north wind in Tahitian, which is the direction from which cyclones typically hit our atoll from. She had grown up on the pearl farm and had never known the sights and smells of land, let alone any creature more menacing than the small house geckos that are ubiquitous in the islands.
The rat didn’t lose any time and darted straight behind an empty plastic water barrel. With no TV, radio and limited social interaction, this was the most exciting thing we had seen in a very long time. I jumped up from my seat and raced to the barrel. Toerau was there already, her tail twitching in anticipation. I lifted the barrel, exposing the vermin. It looked at me then at Toerau and surprised everyone by running straight off the deck into the water, ten feet below. It landed with a splash and did the rat paddle on the surface for a few feet. We were jumping up and down, screaming our lungs out which I suspect spurred its next move that was no less surprising than its leap of faith into the water. It dove down then swam about ten feet horizontally underwater before coming back up for air. It was a windless day and the gin clear lagoon showed every detail of the coral two feet below.
The farm is held above the coral head by poles, some of which are at a 45° angle to the water. The rat was now visibly aiming for one of them. Suddenly we noticed a movement through the transparent water. It was rust red and looked like a fist-sized piece of dead coral on the move but we immediately recognized it as one of the small octopuses that inhabit the coral head.
My parents’ mentor when we first came to the atoll in the early 70’s was a wise Paumotu (person of the Tuamotus) man named Raumati who had what seemed to be a supernatural connection to the weather, creatures and atoll ecology. He had told my parents of an octopus scaling a waterfront coconut tree to eat baby rats out of their nest, high up in the fronds of the tree. He was not one to speak when he didn’t have something to say and was often solicited for his wise counsel. Regardless, the octopus story had always seemed more than a little incredible - until now.
A couple of resident octopuses doing the wild thang underneath the farm.
The octopus was at an equal distance from the rat as the pole. I could see it was better at geometry than me because it calculated the trajectory of the rat’s escape route. If it chased the rat like I had expected it to, the rat would have reached the pole in time to scamper up. Instead they arrived at the same time and the octopus whose mass couldn’t have exceeded the rat’s, engulfed the unlucky mammal and swam off happily with it to it’s silent underwater lair. Above water on the deck of the pearl farm it wasn’t so quiet – the air was filled with wild cheering and the sound of our feet hitting the wooden planks as we jumped up and down, celebrating entertainment of the wildest variety.
]]>The following Sunday I made my way across the 5 kilometers of lagoon that separated our farms. He invited me to eat with him which I gladly accepted. After I cleaned my plate of stewed chicken, peas and white rice with a piece of baguette, he asked me with a half smile if I wanted to see the pearls. He knew I was more than a little eager to see them and he seemed to be enjoying taking his sweet time. Of the 20 oysters second-grafted, 14 of them had produced pearls. It was the first time I had seen pearls that big that had come from my own work and it was an unforgettable moment. Instead of just pouring them all out of a single bag, he had separated them by category, the rounds in one bag, the baroques in another and so on. They all sat on a towel that he had laid out on his table in different little piles.
I looked at them one at a time, turning them in my hand, inspecting them for their color, shape and blemishes. I could feel Julien’s eyes on me, studying me. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bag that he carefully opened, poured into his hand then placed The Pearl directly in front of me.
It stared up at me from the table, an impossible luster reflecting everything around it. It was a light lagoon green that was unmistakable, even in the poor light of the makeshift outdoor kitchen. I saw my own hand in it as I reached to pick it up. Flawless. Not even the tiniest pin-prick could be found, nothing to keep it real. It measured up at over 15mm’s making it the largest pearl of the small batch.
As I marveled at it, it struck me that Julien might have placed it in front of me as a gift. After all, I had asked for nothing in return for the work that I’d done. I had been grateful to have the opportunity to try my hand on his oysters but on the other hand I had come through for him and produced some respectable results, on par with an experienced technician.
I went into it with no expectations of profit, only gratitude for being given the opportunity. The Pearl changed the game though and left me lusting after it. I pushed the desire away and gave The Pearl back feeling the fever of covetousness rising. Julien was and still is a friend but I sensed that his generosity, possibly like my own, cohabitated with a another emotion.
In a gesture of idealistic stoicism, I wordlessly finished admiring the pearl, reached across the table and placed it in front of him. He scanned my face, hesitated a moment then quickly put the pearl back in his pocket.
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"Are you sure?” This seemed crazy to me. I searched Julien’s green eyes for any sign of him kidding around. His sun blackened face was typically animated by a faint mischievous smile, infused with good nature but sometimes you wondered. Julien was a Paumotu (person of the Tuamotu Archipelago) and one of the tiny handful of farmers who had started farming Tahitian pearls around the same time as our farm, circa 1990.
But he was dead serious. “If they all die, no problem.”
Julien had accosted me on the quay where the people from different far-flung parts of the atoll came together every week. Essentials like food and gasoline arrived on the weekly supply ship, making it a great excuse to put work aside and catch up with fellow farmers. This was often a less-than-sober occasion but today Julien and I were both clear headed. A year or so earlier a Japanese graft technician had done a trial run at his one-room farm and the pearls were in need of harvesting.
Julien could have killed the oysters and harvested the pearls as most would have done but word had reached him that I had been recently instructed in the secret craft known locally as the “surgreffe.” The surgreffe involved making a tiny incision in the flesh of the oyster and gently extracting the pearl. The pearl is then replaced by a nucleus that mimics the pearl and boom, the process starts all over again but with a much bigger nucleus, consequently resulting in a larger and far more valuable pearl. At the time it was the strict domain of Japanese (and one Australian) technicians that jealously kept the secret. It requires a steady hand, very specific tools and a knowledge of where and how to use them. I had all of these but was lacking in a last crucial piece of the puzzle: experience. My instructor in the surgreffe, the Japanese technician Yamamoto, who had taught me had let me do a couple in front of him. I had the basic idea down but without practicing I felt like I was thoroughly unqualified to risk the lives of another farmer’s oysters. It is said that to begin to master pearl seeding or the “first graft” of oysters, it requires having done a minimum of 10,000.
Despite my objections, Julien insisted and the following Saturday found me leaving our bumpy windward side and crossing the atoll’s lagoon to his farm on the east side, grafting tools in my pack and butterflies in my stomach.
His farm consisted of nothing more than a ramshackle hut on crumbling wooden stilts with a short walkway that led to his motu, a segment of the chain in the mini islands that make up the atoll of Ahe. The east side of the island is what you might imagine a coral atoll to look like. Dark green coconut trees arc away from a thin strip of cream colored sand that meets water so clear you aren’t sure where it starts. It then blends into every possible shade of blue and turquoise and is further enhanced by the wild contrasting pinks and oranges of coral gardens that span off into deeper water. Fat parrot fish languidly crunch coral near the surface and flip their blue/green and sometimes orange/yellow tails out of the still water. The peace that infuses life on this side of the atoll is due to the lack of wind and chop on the water. The prevailing wind comes from the East so the east side of the atoll is typically in the lee, especially where there are trees to block it.
As much as his property invited leisure, all I had on my mind was how I would best do what I came to do. My primary concern was the well being of his oysters but I knew that sooner or later I would have to start on the road to being experienced in the craft. Also, grafting outside of one’s farm publicly places a pearl technician within a quality continuum. I wanted to be sure I was at the right end of the continuum and yet I was stepping into unfamiliar territory with no safety net. Despite my friend’s nonchalance I knew that a botch-job here could stick to me like a bad odor for an indefinite amount of time.
The oysters had been placed in retention nets that allowed Julien to know that what he brought me was guaranteed to have pearls waiting inside. This is a common way that farmers have of getting an early indication of the quality of their technician’s work. The nets are on the oysters for the first six weeks usually, then removed so that the health of the oyster isn’t affected by the mesh that will quickly clog with marine growth.
While he was out retrieving the oysters from their holding lines I got my tools together, sharpened my knives and was ready for him on his return. The operations of the 20 oysters he brought me went surprisingly well and a year and a half later found us back on the wharf of the port for the arrival of another supply ship. He told me that he had harvested the pearls and that if I wanted to come and see them I was welcome to.
Please tune in next week for PART TWO.
]]>By definition a baroque pearl has one single trait that other pearl types (round, semi-round, semi-baroque and circled) share: no axis of symmetry.
]]> This post is a nod to one of my favorite types of Tahitian pearls: baroques.
By definition a baroque pearl has one single trait that other pearl types (round, semi-round, semi-baroque and circled) share: no axis of symmetry.
In a recent post about circled pearls, I mentioned the confusion in the name "baroque" that I think can be attributed to the retail pearl scene. It makes sense that retailers would want to simplify the world of potential pearl buying customers by calling circled pearls "baroques," surely in the logic that a circle is round and that would lead people to expect circled pearls to be round. Imagine your outrage at buying a strand of circled pearls, expecting them to be round and instead getting pearls with bands around them?
Truthfully, it's hard for me to imagine that sort of outrage because whether I bought something in a brick-and-mortar or online store, I would expect to see it first. I guess this wouldn't be the first time things were dumbed-down for the buying public. But what a tragedy! If we call circled pearls baroques then what do baroques become? If true baroques don't get their own name how do we go about celebrating what is so wonderful about them?
To me it's their quirky, free form that I like best. Sometimes it can be subtle, throwing them just off of round and other times they can be far wilder. We have seen pearls that look like Mickey Mouse, doves, hearts, baseball caps, seals... the list goes on an on. Unlike all other pearl types, if you drill it through a baroque's roundest axis, it will wobble once spun on that axis. The fun is in the wobble in my eyes because it is what protects them from looking like everything else.
And to me not looking like everything else is the single most glorious trait of Tahitian pearls. Tahitian pearls break the mould of our very idea of what a pearl is supposed to look like. Dark, rich colors are the predominant reason of course, but to me we should not leave the baroque out in the cold. It should be celebrated for it's diversity of form and its break from our obstinate idea of a round pearl being the most sought after.
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A friend of mine sent me this photo because I'm a huge Conan the Barbarian fan. Haha, not really but the trailer sure looks like fun.
]]>Jason Momoa, the new face of Conan the Barbarian, wearing a Tahitian pearl on leather.
A friend of mine sent me this photo because I'm a huge Conan the Barbarian fan. Haha, not really but the trailer sure looks like fun.
Tahitian pearls on leather are increasingly seen in the mainstream, something I knew in my bones would happen 13 years ago.
Before I took over at Kamoka, I worked hard for my father and saved up for a project of my own. The money that I made under my dad I put aside and after finding a local partner, started my own farm on the island of Raiatea in 1997. I was able to do this remotely while I kept working at Kamoka then at the end of 1998, my partner and I found ourselves with our first harvest. As much as I'd like to take credit, I have to give it to my (now ex) partner. We were in the process of sorting pearls when he disappeared for a little while. He came back with a Cheshire Cat grin and a strange black cord around his neck with a pearl drilled (gasp!) all the way through with a monstrous hole. "What do you think?" He asked to which I replied that it was horrible and how could he do that to one of our sacred pearls? At the time, Tahitian pearls were new enough on the scene that the explosion of creativity had not happened yet. They were worn nearly exclusively with gold. The movie "Blood Diamond" with Leonardo Di Caprio was still 8 years off and the information available regarding the ethics of non-fairtrade gold was even farther away.
"I thought you might say that. Here, I made one for you. Put it on and tell me what you think tomorrow."
"Yeah, whatever. If it'll make you happy." I said as I tied it around my neck.
There was something enchanting about it. Nearly immediately I realized that he was right. The more I wore it the more I realized how perfect it was. Tahitian pearls are fresh and modern still and back then they were practically screaming to be worn differently than traditional white pearls.
The farm was a casualty of the pearling industry crash in 2003 but from our humble little operation in Raiatea that day, the idea spread like wildfire. Robert Wan went on to produce a successful though ill-tested product line with pearls and leather and simultaneously designers across the globe picked it up and ran with it.
At the end of 1999, my family and I moved to the main island of Tahiti and built a house in the sleepy end-of-the-road village of Teahupo'o. Fate would have it that beyond being a garden of eden and idyllic setting to raise children, it coincidentally turned into the hub of the surfing world. An annual contest called the Billabong Pro assembled the best surfers in the world and numerous surf industry players. The wave at Teahupo'o (pronounced: cho-po-oh, not cho-poo) is still considered to be one of the scariest and most perfect waves in the world, ideal for top-tier surfing performance as well as a veritable media utopia.
The idea of a brand of simple, surf specific jewelry with leather instead of gold came back on the table and after overcoming a number of setbacks, the brand Mana was born with the addition of a couple of surfer friends. Our project grew and soon we were selling product through a website as well as a number of surf shops across the world. Though the project was cut short, we amassed an understanding of how to build a necklace that would resist the rigors of an ocean based lifestyle. Our experience was that once men or women put our necklaces on, like us, they often didn't take them off. Producing a non-metal based "jewelry" item that would last as long as possible and looked great became our goal.
Stay tuned for news about our upcoming line of leather based jewelry.
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These are some circled pearls. The ones in the background are in an oyster shell. Circled pearls have rings that pinch into the pearl and strongly affect (for the best) the color. Circled pearls are often the most lively and have more character than other forms of pearl with the possible exception of the free form baroques.
In America circled pearls are often called baroques which is a shame because it leaves funky and fun baroques out in the cold with no label of their own. I'll dedicate a future blog post to the forgotten baroques.
]]>A friend of mine named of Ryan Young put together this little clip of me diving a couple of years ago. Ryan is a talented videographer who I got to know while taking photos for a surf/dive movie sponsored by PADI, Bodyglove Wetsuits and TransworldSurf Magazine. The movie is called "Drop Zone" and you can see the trailer here on Transworld's website: http://tinyurl.com/42lartw
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This past week we set pearls and work aside, packed up the car and headed for the mountains. Summer is fleeting here in the Pacific North West so we have been itching to get away from our home in Portland to enjoy it. There's much to do here of course but having back-packed with our parents, Celeste and I were both keen to get our kids out to see what the higher elevations of Oregon had to offer. We were familiar with the Sierras and Trinity Alps of California but neither of us had been in the back country of the Pacific Wonderland and after living here for a year now, we were way over-due.
Our camp from above.
Guided by our favorite wilderness author Douglas Lorain and his amazing book Backpacking in Oregon, we headed east for over five hours to the Wallowa Mountains. I drove while Celeste and our good friend Sandra Bao (like Celeste, also a Lonely Planet guide book author) were in charge of piloting. Sandra wrote the last Lonely Planet edition of Oregon so it was fortuitous and fun having her with us.
Our camp from below.
My pilots landed us in a very small town called Pondosa. Technically it was wrong turn but a visit to the only store in town quickly reminded us that when traveling the voyage is often the destination. The "store" was the home of a sweet elderly couple who were obviously glad for our unlikely visit. They showed us pictures of the Pondosa they knew 30 years prior and the sawmill and buzz of activity that surrounded it. Their home has 12 rooms upstairs that used to lodge two men in each room. Now, the cobwebs and musty air are testament that all has been quiet for many years. They proudly showed us t-shirts and newspaper articles that claimed Pondosa to be the geographical center of the United States (Hawaii and Alaska included). A Google search would later contest it but we were glad to have journeyed to such a self-declared power center. After a half an hour we waved goodbye to them and their numerous spooky cats and got on our way.
The constellation Jasmine.
As we climbed in altitude the desert and rolling dry hills that we had been in for hours gave way to lush pines. On arriving at the trail head we breathed in the thinner, pine heavy air and eagerly hoisted our heavy loads onto our backs. I was barefoot and was immediately glad to be so. I found that curving my feet and gripping my toes gave me considerably better traction than stiff-soled hiking boots. Balance with the heavy pack was easy and walking through the rushing streams was a joy instead of something to be avoided. Celeste quickly became frustrated by her flip flops and abandoned them then our son Tevai's waterloggerd skate shoes came off, soon followed by Jasmine's.
The trail climbed steadily and followed a stream, noisily plunging over giant granite boulders. About a mile into the 4.1 mile hike we met a ranger on the way down. Dennis was an affable mix of John Denver and Willie Nelson and was clearly in his element. He was impressed by our lack of shoes and asked us if we had filled out the honor system visitor's permit at the trail head. We had and after checking it with some spectacles hanging from his neck he explained that it was an important detail because it helped them track the number of visitors which in turn was helpful for their annual budget demand. Funding for the work of the Oregon Parks and Wilderness has been getting slashed to the point of it being a struggle to do their job.
The noise of the stream became more distant as the trail climbed away from it then finally we entered a meadow where we were to make our camp. Ranger Dennis was spot on when he said that we would be singing at the sight of it. The meadow which was bright green and full of wild flowers was met by the harsh white of granite rubble mixed with pines making for a perfect alpine effect. There was a small island and Tevai suggest we cross the stream to what looked like a campsite on the other side. A campfire circle awaited us with several perfect places to pitch our tents.
Glorious Lookingglass Lake.
Tevai and I got busy answering the question of what we were going to have for dinner. We could have literally and easily caught trout from our tents but we struck off to explore and found that the Brook trout were abundant and eager to gobble whatever we threw in the stream. We ate trout every night and Tevai surprised us all by pulling 13 and 12 inch fish from gorgeous Lookingglass Lake the day after our arrival. Brook trout over 11 inches are uncommon so the three plus mile hike to the spectacular lake was more than worth it.
Sandra and her first trout.
The meadow on the other side of the creek from our campsite had veins of tiny streams cutting through it with freezing cold water rushing to meet the main stream. In some places the streams were a foot wide and two feet deep but incredibly enough were full of trout. The fine art of "trout tickling" quickly ensued and we had a beautiful specimen for dinner in no time. To "tickle" a trout, you have to first flush them out with your hands and feet. Once you locate them you have to murk up the water just upstream of where your trout is hiding. You then put both hands under the bank and slowly find your trout. If you are gentle enough, they will stay put as you close both hands around them. There's something primal and deeply satisfying about it but most of all it's a great recipe for wet fun. Back at the main stream Sandra caught her first trout on a rod and was instantly "hooked" on the craft of fishing in a small stream.
This is the one I caught with my hands.
Nightfall was always an occasion to look forward to. The moon was waxing and nearly full on our last night making for some fun night photography; making me glad I lugged my photo equipment up the mountain. Despite the warm days, it got very chilly as the sun went down so a campfire at night was the routine. This was cause to partake in the fine American tradition of melted marshmallows and chocolate on graham crackers ie: s'mores.
"Can I have s'more?"
On the way home Sandra "steered" us to the cowboy town of Pendleton that boasts a massive rodeo called the Pendleton Round-up that has been going since 1910. It's also the home and factory location for the wool clothing brand Pendleton but most of all it's a slice of American life that felt strangely foreign to us. A big Dodge truck with an Obama bin lyin' bumpersticker was a mirror to the Prius with the Palin/Sheen 2012 sticker we saw on the way out of Portland.
Having an out of body experience as the moon lit up the valley.
Getting to know some of the breath-taking scenery and wildlife as well as the long roads and endless horizons that are part of a road-trip in America, help me to feel like life in this country is something I can claim as my own.
Celeste wrote a post while I wrote this one so for a different perspective please check out her popular blog at http://www.coconutradio.blogspot.com/
This is a photo I took on my last trip to the farm. The shine on the buoy is from a full moon that came up a little before the sun went down over the land. The strings hanging are what we use to tie the oyster strings temporarily to the platform so that we can easily access them to work on. I've never seen a starrier sky anywhere in the world.
]]>Last weekend I joined friends in the pearl community for good times and pearl-related activities in LA. The party was hosted by a good friend and retail pearl genius Jeremy Shepherd of Pearl Paradise. I flew to the Bay Area then met up with another great friend Sarah Canizzaro of Kojima Pearl. Sarah did a brilliant job of blogging about the weekend which can be found here on her website.
After the party, I had the opportunity to get in the water just north of Malibu and was pleasantly surprised to find some excellent spearfishing. On the flight from LAX to Oakland I packed some fish into my carry-on and I couldn't believe it when the TSA agents didn't notice them in the x-rays. I spent the rest of the week visiting with family and friends in Marin County. Highlights were seeing old friends and getting some good surfing in with my soon-to-be brother-in-law.
The photo above is of the solar panels that provide our farm with the energy we need for our operation. On the horizon you can just make out the far side of the atoll so it's easy to see how such "big sky country" is ideal for solar energy.
]]>Two remoras hang from their suction-cup heads while Kamoka's silent work force happily nibbles away.
As the morning wore on and the piles of pipis, etc accumulated I noticed that when I went to fetch more cords of oysters from the temporary holding platform in front of the farm, they would be increasingly clean. As a child I had always been mesmerized by fish and growing up I told myself that someday I would live where I could feed fish outside my door. Now, I was watching fish feed every day which was (and still is) a huge delight. The early years of the farm were all about hard work and we were fully committed to getting the job done, no matter how tired, stung or otherwise tortured. So when I told suggested to my father Patrick that I thought we might not need to scrape the oysters at all, I wasn't surprised at his reaction of exasperation. What had I learned in school in America and when would I start to work like a man? I wasn't sure what I had learned in school either but I was pretty sure that the fish were ready to do our job for us.
It quickly became obvious to both of us that scraping oysters clean was a thing of the past. My father designed several underwater platforms in shallow zones where fish were numerous and soon we were cleaning huge numbers of oysters by simply leaving them on the platforms for a day or two.
As time went on, it also became obvious that our fish populations were thriving. Even more exciting was a strengthening of all the species across the board. I visited a farm in Manihi once that had an unnaturally large population of Kotimu (Sergeant Majors). They are an aggressive fish and their numbers had ballooned due to the habit the farmer had of throwing his oyster scrapings and table left-overs into the water. Letting the fish clean the fouled oysters didn't have this effect because the surface area to be cleaned was just too vast for one species to dominate. It also became clear that different fish were suited to eat different things. The delicate butterfly fish could stick their pointy snouts into crevices and extract the anemones, the brutish parrotfish went straight for the pipis that they found a welcome change from the coral they usually grind, the surgeon fish devoured any form of algae and on it went, every organism that had taken up residence on the oysters was dutifully removed by it's corresponding fish.
According to the account of early explorers, these desolate atolls had fish populations many times more robust than they are today. I believe that Tahitian pearl farming done in the way we do it at Kamoka can help to restore fish stocks to their original states. I believe this is one of many reasons that makes Kamoka tahitian pearls the most ecologically sound pearls in the world and makes them truly something that we can feel good about wearing.
Farmers typically grow their oysters far off the lagoon floor so, much like a sailboat, they become homes to whatever finds them. Our oyster, the Pinctada margaritifera, is a lover of clean water so it is typically farmed near the surface, in depths of normally 20-60 meters deep.
Just about everything in the ocean starts life so small that it has no choice but to drift with the current until it either develops it's own means of locomotion like fish or it finds a place to settle. Pearl oysters provide such a place so if they are left alone they essentially begin to turn into living reefs, complete with corals, crabs, anemones, fish, sponges, you name it. One of a pearl farmer's biggest and dirtiest jobs is removing these competing species so that the oysters can be healthier and thus create more beautiful pearls. For years we did as the few other farms did, scrape endlessly only to scrape again a short time later. Very much a marine version of Sisyphus and the rock he pushed up a hill.
Early one morning like all the other mornings, we had gone out to get strings of grafted (seeded) oysters that had young pearls growing in them for three months. At the time of nucleation they had been perfectly clean and now just 90 days later they were unrecognizable with "bio-fouling." Each string had ten oysters spaced out evenly over six feet of cord but only rarely could you even tell that an oyster was there. The most aggressive of the real estate claimers is an oyster species called Pinctada maculata, locally known simply as "Pipi." In some atolls, they grow abundantly in zones where fish are few and are well known for their prized natural pearls, "poe pipi" (poe = pearl in Tahitian). To Tahitian pearl farmers they are a scourge though, competing for food and oxygen by carpeting the species farmers try to cultivate.
Anemones were spread throughout the pearling islands and atolls in the early to mid 90's by farmers buying oysters from neighboring islands where they were either cheaper or more readily available. With no shell or exoskeleton to grow, they typically out-compete everything, growing shockingly fast in a matter of days only. They sting the outer lip of the oyster they grow on, crippling it and severely affecting pearl quality. Worse still is that they often detach or break into bits when we dive to move the oysters around. Contact with the skin feels like middle ground between a mosquito and bee sting. After a dive with anemones, swollen faces and stings on various body parts are often the case.
When we moved to America from Tahiti last summer we packed up our house, put most of it in a container then flew off with just a few bags. The most amazing part of the experience was living the three months with only a few items of clothing and some random things that didn't make it into the packing boxes. When the container finally showed up, I half wanted to make a big bonfire and start this new adventure in our lives with less STUFF. I've always prided myself on living outside of the habits of modern consumer society but here was a mountain of things that we didn't need. An undeniable litmus strip of truth in the form of 57 boxes.
Back up three months from then and we had freshly arrived. The departure from Tahiti had been a nightmare for me for many different reasons then just days before leaving, a dear friend who had been one of the pillars of the pearl farm in it's early years, passed away in the prime of his life.
At an hour and half's distance from the ocean, I knew that my outlet and source of comfort that I had relied on for the last couple of decades was out of reach. Sure I'd be able to get away to the coast every now and then but my daily fix would have to be closer. In high school I was crazy into running cross-country so the choice was obvious that I would rekindle a love for running that had been sleeping for many years.
My running shoes however were boxed up in a container, cooking on a dock somewhere in the tropics. Of course I couldn't go out and buy new ones so I just went to the trails anyway and discovered the magic of running without shoes on. I had run without shoes a few times back in high school but more as a lark than anything else. The Nike waffle tread was all the rage and our cross-country team even built a ten foot long shoe every year affectionately named The Great Nike that (legend had it) would alight on the roof of the school gym the Friday before Halloween.
To my surprise running didn't make my body sore any more the way I remembered it. Not long after starting I Googled barefoot running and my jaw dropped on seeing that there were weirdos all over the world (but mostly in America) that were running un-shod and loving it like I was.
A Youtube frenzy followed and I learned how researchers have shown through treadmill impact tests that running with padding on your feet makes you come down dramatically harder on them than having no shoes at all. Other videos showed slow motion images of how the arch of the foot is SUPPOSED to collapse with every foot strike. In the running culture I used to be a part of in the late 80's this stuff would have gotten you hanged by your shoe laces. The more I learned about how good it was to run without shoes the more it excited me.
How many other things do we take for granted as necessary that we could live very well without?
The sound of the approaching boat became louder, confirming our guess that it was our neighbor with his rowdy friends on their way home from a bender in the village on the other side of the atoll.
“We better go have a look,” my father said in French. I knew he was right, but having never been in a fight in my life, the idea of confronting a boat of several big, probably drunk guys made me feel more than a little unsure.
We hurried to our aluminum boat, grabbing a fish gaff and a broom-length hardwood dowel heavy enough to knock out an elephant. I really, really didn’t want to use either, but I wanted even less to be left with only my bare hands.
After firing up the outboard, we cast off from the dock into the moonless night while the wind whipped the chilly lagoon water at us. After driving into the chop for 400 meters, we spotted the boat stopped where we had expected it to be. I could feel my heart slamming in my chest. We could barely make out several people in the darkness, including one getting back into our neighbor’s flimsy wooden boat. My father threw a volley of insults at them to which we could just make out their replies over the roar of our motor and the white noise of the wind. Much yelling followed, making me think of dogs barking at each other through a fence. My fear dissipated as I realized that the only defense or offense we needed was our own v-bottomed aluminum boat. If push had come to shove, it would have been very easy to sink their boat with ours. They hurriedly got their motor started as we circled them again and again, and finally they puttered off into the night in the direction of their islet.
The next day a check on our oysters showed that the bandits didn’t have enough time to steal any. Although relieved, I knew that the bandit situation would have to be resolved soon. Our work was strenuous enough that we didn’t need the added strain and mental torment.
A few days after the incident, a supply boat came with some of our gear, so we put work aside and boated the 6 km to the village where it docked. At the time of this story (early nineties) there was no airport in Ahe yet; all supplies were delivered by cargo ships, whose rotations were notoriously irregular. To locals, it always seemed like a small miracle when the cargo ships actually appeared. It was never all business when a supply boat came though: all the farmers whose homes and farms were spread out over the atoll would come together for some much needed socializing. We squeezed in between two boats and waited on the dock with some friends while people milled around.
I realized suddenly that Floresse was just a few meters away, on a path to walk by us, unaware of our presence. My father saw him too and immediately jumped up to step in his path. At my father’s height of 5’6”, Floresse could have almost stepped over him. I jumped up as well and winced in anticipation as my father reached up to shove him in the shoulder as he asked him angrily what it was going to take for him to leave us alone. I saw Floresse stiffen and clench his hands but instead of taking a swing, he looked around at the crowd that had formed and to my surprise backed away.
The following week found us again at the village waiting for supplies. This time we were sitting with our feet over the dock when Floresse approached. Strangely, I hardly recognized him. He hadn’t changed in any obvious way but just looked smaller. He looked meek and embarrassed and smiled showing good will. He explained in a tiny voice that he had come to excuse himself for the bad feelings and that it wasn’t his idea, it was the others that had pushed him to be that way.
On a small island, the necessity of getting along with others is heightened in a way that is hard to understand for continent dwellers. This was my first major lesson but far from my last or most adventurous.
To this day, twenty years later, we still have never had oysters disappear from our waters. Pearls on the other hand are far easier to abscond with but that is a different story.
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That day, like every other day of the week excepting Sundays, we had been up before dawn, worked all day and well into the evening, and were absolutely worn out when the moment came to shower and climb into bed. Much of our work was underwater with compressed air sent to us via a hose called a “hookah rig.” Our work below the surface was limited to the time it took for the compressor to use up a full tank of gas (about 6 hours). The advantage was obvious over traditional bottle diving but for better or worse, it allowed us to spend blocks of time underwater that were long enough to drain us of every drop of energy.
Above water, we spent daylight hours preparing oysters to be sold to other farms who had the means to graft (or seed) pearls. This was an endless job of first retrieving the oysters where they grew suspended over deep water, and then bringing them to the farm for processing—which involved gently removing them from their lines and drilling them with small holes to be hung again. This work was a means of spacing out the oysters for optimum growth and tracking quantities.
Our night-time work was primarily tying knots so we would have “chapelets” or strings the next day for hanging oysters.
On this night, as we were settling in after an exhausting workday, a far-off drone became audible over the din of the trade winds that battered the farm night and day. We both sat up and listened as a boat approached our plot of lagoon water. We knew it was our neighbor Gilles. He was a quiet guy who had come to live in Ahe from his native New Caledonia. We had never had any problems with Gilles, but lately he had been rolling with a rough crew headed by Floresse, another new-comer who like Gilles had been attracted to the atoll by tales of easy money.
Floresse stood at about 6 feet 4 inches. Atop his broad, square shoulders was a head with wild sun-bleached locks of hair and small, light eyes fixed in permanent squints against the harsh tropical sun. Despite his flowery name, his often intoxicated state made him prone to abusive language, which he had recently been yelling in the direction of our farm at night on his way to party with our neighbor.
Though we didn’t have pearls growing in them yet, our oysters represented serious sweat equity as well as monetary value, and oyster bandits are a problem that troubles every pearl farmer's sleep. Polynesians especially are natural swimmers and divers—the thought of jumping into night water, diving 30 feet in the blackness and groping around for oysters won’t slow many of them down.
(Part two coming next week)
Cups of black instant coffee get tossed back, bread is slathered with canned NZ butter and the gears click into place. Heiarii and Laurent grab freediving gear and do a quick run out to the lines to get oysters for Timi and Aristide to work on for the day. The oysters grow on horizontal polypropylene lines that are from 200 to 600 meters in length and submerged at about 7 meters of depth over 40 meters of clean lagoon water.
While Laurent and Heiarii are diving, Timi is sharpening his scalpels, pouring his nuclei from bags and filling a water bottle for some long hours in his chair. Meanwhile, Aristide is opening oysters from the previous day and starting the painstaking process of searching for oysters that have a sufficiently colorful shell. Once he finds these rare beauties, he'll put them aside and use them throughout the day for tissue donors. A tissue donor is an oyster that is selected for it's exceptional color and then processed for it's mantle organ. The mantle is what secretes the shell so in choosing shells of a particular color, we can influence the eventual color of the pearl. One donor oyster will usually provide 20 -30 mantle pieces.
Soon after the divers return, Timi will have a full tray of oysters that Laurent has wedged gently open with clothespin pegs. He'll then implant each oyster that he deems ready for the operation with a nucleus and a piece of living mantle tissue that Aristide has prepared for him.
Timi's challenge will be to graft as many oysters, as well as he can before lunch. His dexterity will determine the quality of the pearls, the success rate and the number of oysters that make it safely through the operation. All of the investment of a pearl farm rides on the shoulders of the grafter so predictably many farms have been sunk by sub-par grafters. It's a job that requires skill, patience and long hours of practice to reach a passable status. Timi joined the team in 1993 and has been grafting since around 2003 His mastery of the craft is immediately obvious to anyone who has the pleasure of observing him.
At lunch time, everything will get a saltwater wash down with a firetruck-style black hose and the whole crew will stop for a needed break and food. Food is usually rice with fish or chicken with some sort of salad that often will have some oyster muscle (that tastes a bit like a scallop) in it seasoned lightly with lime or vinegar (yum!).
Everybody helps with the cleaning and dishes and after about an hour has passed, work sparks back up until around 3PM. The oysters that have been grafted throughout the day will then get brought back out to the lines, away from the farm where the water is most free from silt. Timi is usually quick to join the dive crew as a dip in the lagoon is more than welcome after a full day of sitting in a chair.
After a final clean-up the crew will often throw freediving gear and spearguns in the boat and head to the pass for some fish, adventure and fun. As well as being great exercise and a guaranteed good time, it's also a moment of camaraderie. A tight-nit team is crucial to the overall health of the farm and the oysters as well as the quality of the pearls.
This is a fly-over account of a typical day. If anyone wants more details about different parts mentioned above, please just leave questions in the comments below. Thanks!
Just before my last Tahiti trip, I picked up a flash unit for my Canon 7D that (thanks to the camera's built in transmitter) can communicate with the camera to take photos where the light source doesn't come from the camera. That's what gives the fun look of the pics of my dad and Alain.
My whole two week trip was full of photo goodness, from trippy moonlight photography to oil-still lagoon water, to pearl product photography on an unexpected model who was volunteering at the farm. So in the spirit of moving this blog in a more visual direction, here's a moonlit shot of Alain and I enjoying the warm breeze on the cabin of the boat. The lights on the horizon are the village of Uturoa and the lights in the sky are stars. For more photography of Polynesia, pearls and surfing please check out www.joshhumbert.com.
My father and his friend Alain had just arrived after an eventful crossing from New Zealand, complete with near hurricane strength winds and equipment failure that forced them to limp into port for repairs in Rarotonga. The low pressure system that did the damage was so vast and powerful that the 747 that brought me to Tahiti from California tacked on more than two hours to avoid the worst part.
My father, Patrick Humbert will be 70 in less than two months. I can't exactly say that he is slowing down though. A few years ago he encountered a storm so violent between New Zealand and New Caledonia, he lost all navigation control and had to call out an S.O.S. that was picked up by a military ship. The massive rescue ship offloaded his shaken crew but in the rough conditions came terrifyingly close to shredding the boat with it's giant propeller that was churning, half out the water. In a scene straight out of a real life James Bond movie, he cut the rope that tied him to the behemoth just in time, saving himself and his boat. He declined further help then drifted happily alone on ocean currents for several days until finally being close enough to New Caledonia to call a friend for a tow in to safety.
I was alone because I had flown in to visit with him but as my plane was touching down I saw the boat headed toward the anchorage and still a little ways off. When I got my luggage, he was nowhere to be seen so I asked a friend I happened to meet at the airport for a ride to the anchorage, in hopes of catching him before he headed off to get me. I hitched a ride in a dinghy with a yachty, hoping to surprise them on the boat but when I got there they had gone to pick me up.
An exhausting but awesome week of harvesting pearls and accumulating sleep deprivation had me nodding off after an hour of reading and writing. I awoke to a clang and a jerk that can only be described as feeling wrong. I jumped up and noticed straight off that the two spear-like hulls of the catamaran were no longer pointed at the mountain and into the whipping trades. In a mounting panic I ran to the front of the boat to have my fears confirmed. The mooring had broken and we were now headed backwards towards an expensive charter catamaran with no one on board. I yelled out lamely for help but only one person was watching and he called out for me to drop the anchor. Right. Easy. But how? I figured that the controls would be in the cabin so I rushed in to find nothing, cursing myself for not being able to remember from the last time, ten years earlier, I had been aboard. Just as we started to get perilously close to the charter boat, the wind shifted, turned and started pushing us forward now towards a freshly painted yellow,racing catamaran. This time the business end of the boat was headed like two massive javelins unavoidably, certainly towards disaster.
I hurried onto one of the hulls and shimmied like a monkey forward on the slick aluminum, focusing hard to not fall off. I reached the front just before impact and made a bridge with my body, Wiley Coyote style, that got accordioned together until I couldn't take it any longer. The second hull slowed dramatically and ended up giving the hull of the yellow catamaran the tiniest kiss as the back of the boat was now getting caught by the wind, whipping our boat out to clear water.
A second, less hurried look at the anchor revealed how to get it down so I finally dropped it in over 30 meters of depth and breathed one massive sigh of relief. My father and Alain got back about 20 minutes later. In French, "you little $h!t, we've been looking all over for you!" was the affectionate greeting I was treated to. "Wow, sorry. By the way, is this where you anchored?" We all laughed about it later over some good French wine and fresh fish.
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This first blog post is intended for those of you not familiar with our story. For those of you who know us there might be things of interest too. :)
While I was in Ahe this past week, harvesting pearls and soaking up the things I love about the pearl farming life, I reflected back on this 38 year voyage of my family's.
My earliest memories are all connected to fishing events like getting pulled into the water while shore fishing at the pass and the sting of being too young to go live-bait fishing at night in the outrigger with my brother, dad and Raumati, our island mentor.
The memories go on and I now suspect that they were linked to the vague feeling of un-ease I felt during my last years of student life in America. The feeling was lifted when I went to visit my father in hopes of being helpful in his brave new endeavor of farming pearls. He had just relocated to Ahe after living on the main island of Tahiti for 15 years.
My father had previously made his living as a fine wood worker/builder and the last thing he built in his shop was a beautiful little wooden boat. It was with that seaworthy craft that he started his next business and turned the page to a new chapter in our family's life. The feeling of coming home and the excitement of being pioneers in a new industry kept me on and I was joined by my girlfriend Celeste a couple years later. We married soon after and raised our two children there.
The process and the people that made up my pearl farming existence have been instrumental in my coming of age. I am grateful for that and have long wanted to communicate our family's story and values through pearls. For many years I thought I could channel it through the good people who resell our pearls who can be found on our Friends and Partners page. Also, the logistical complications of dispatching product from Tahiti has been a major roadblock in our pearls arriving at their final destination.
Change has been in the air for us though. The demands that come from putting family (and especially children) before all else, have relocated my immediate family to a colder but endlessly interesting existence in Portland, Oregon, USA.
Ten years ago my father immigrated to New Zealand for the educations of my younger brother and sister. As chance (if you believe in that sort of thing) would have it, his New Zealand chapter ended almost at the exact moment our Portland chapter began.
In my mind, the circumstances are evidence of a feeling that I've always had. Kamoka has it's own heartbeat. It is bigger than me, my father or the innumerable employees, volunteers, friends and family that have participated over the farms 20 year's of existence.
Thank you for reading this far and for tuning in while we embark on the final chapter of our pearl's journey.