NEWS BULLETIN: August 30, 2007
EXCLUSIVE

Is Chinese Pearl Farming Imperiled?

By David Federman, Colored Stone Editor-in-Chief

It took Japan decades to ruin its pearl farming industry with overproduction and pollution. Now China seems to be repeating the process in a matter of years.

This month, the news has only been bad for both the salt and freshwater sectors of China’s pearl trade. Between August 9th and 13th, two tropical storms devastated its southeastern Akoya pearl farm areas—killing, by common estimate, 100 million (you read right!) nucleated oysters. The “great die-off,” as Peter Bazar of Imperial-Deltah in East Providence, Rhode Island, calls it, was caused when flood rains dropped the salinity of the ocean waters to a point where oysters could not survive.

Despite buffeting winds and lashing tides, farmers tried to harvest dead oysters and retrieve premature pearls. But the damage was done. According to Bazar, “There will be a two-year interruption of Chinese Akoya pearls.” Since many, if not most, Chinese Akoya pearls are routed through Japan, this is grim news for the entire Akoya market. “Thankfully,” Bazar adds, “Chinese freshwater pearls will offset some of the shortage.”

Not so fast. According to every leading Chinese news agency, there is now a ban on freshwater pearl farming in the central province of Hubei which produces hundreds of tons of pearls every year in a 13,000-acre area of lakes, rivers, streams and ponds. The ban was announced on August 11th, but was probably overshadowed by storm news.

Bazar says the news concerns, but does not yet alarm, him. “The Number One freshwater pearl-producing province in China is Zhengzhou, the eastern neighbor of Hubei, about 100 miles directly west of Shanghai,” he notes. “Now if a ban was announced there, then you’d have cause for deep worry.”

Nonetheless, the ban has an eerie déjà vu feeling to it. As happened in Japan, farmer’s use of pesticides have caused massive algae buildups and polluted the water supply. To force farmers to clean up, wire services are reporting that Hubei’s local government is denying all license renewals and refusing to permit new farm ventures. Little else is known at this time. We’ll give further details as the industry learns of them. In the mean time, here’s the story as reported by www.chinaview.cn.

WUHAN, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Central China's Hubei Province has banned pearl farming in all lakes, rivers and reservoirs in an attempt to prevent water quality from worsening, local aquatic products administration said Saturday.

Pearl farms have covered a total area of 13,000 hectares in the province, and the annual output has exceeded 400 tons, a spokesman with the administration said.

Some farmers resorted to pesticides and manure to farm the pearl oysters, which has caused swathes of algae to bloom in the water, and turned the water stinky, he said.

The administration said it would not approve new applications to establish such farms, and has ordered all water areas used to cultivate pearls to be cleaned.

Read Part II of this story, posted September 19, 2007: Shell Shock: China’s Pearl Trade Faces Crisis.

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