7 Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About Pearls
Prized throughout history, the iridescent gems are lovely little anomalies of nature
Victoria Gomelsky | April 25, 2016
"On April 28, Nat Geo Wild will premier a documentary about Australian pearls called Secret Life of Pearls. Created by Paspaley Pearling Co., an important producer of South Sea pearls, the doc is set in Western Australia’s remote Kimberly region and in what those Down Under call the Top End, the extra-remote stretch of coast along the country’s Northern Territory.
It’s a place close to my heart. In 2000, my first jewelry-writing assignment brought me to a Paspaley pearl farm in the Arafura Sea, a rustic outpost on Australia’s crocodile-infested Cobourg peninsula (the top of the Top End). The guys who worked the farm, blond and red-necked from the sun, lived in camp-like bunkers protected from the area’s marauding banteng cattle, wild boars, and saltwater crocs by an electrified fence. Their sole duty was to care for the Pinctada maxima oyster shells that thrived in an impressive aquaculture operation just offshore and to ensure that the South Sea pearls nurtured inside grew safely to size. Every night, they ate fried oyster meat or “pasta surprise” prepared by Bernie, the 93-year-old toothless chef, and when they ventured off the farm they went only as far as the honky-tonk town of Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory.
It was a wild, wonderful introduction to the pearl trade. Reflecting on it, I was inspired to dig up these fun facts about the gems:
1. The grain of sand explanation ..."
http://www.jckonline.com/blogs/chain/20 ... -306540353
It covered a lot of ground in a short article or it was so interesting it just seemed short. 
