In order to produce a loose pearl (also known as "round" or "nucleated" pearl) you will need highly qualified specialists known as "Pearl Grafters" or "Pearl Seeding Technicians" because this operation is much more delicate than the previous one. The technician will grab an oyster, place it on a special surgical stand, place a small wedge between the shells of the oyster (because the stand clamps it down), he pushes the gills away and then starts looking for the oyster's foot.

The foot is small and muscular organ that looks more like a little tentacle, and the skin around it is very strong and flexible. An incision is made at the base of the foot and a long, spear-like tool  -known as the "tunneler"- is inserted into the the incision to produce a slender tunnel through the insides of the pearl oyster. You have to be very careful to avoid every one of the oyster's delicate organs: heart, kidney, pancreas and liver, stomach and gut. At the end of this tunnel, we find a small sack-like organ ("the pearl sac"). This "pearl sac" is not really an organ at all, and it has no real function, it's basically made up of connective and gonadal tissues, making it the right choice for growing a pearl. Next, a small bead -commonly known as nucleus (made from the shell of a Mississippi mussel shell)- is introduced and led through the tunnel and into the pearl sac. Is it all over now? Not yet.

You still need an extra ingredient: mantle tissue cells. Why? Because the so called "pearl sac" cannot produce a pearl, and the only portion of the oysters anatomy suitable for this is the one that can secrete nacre or mother-of-pearl: the oyster's mantle. To obtain these nacre secreting cells from the mantle and have them growing in the pearl sac, you have to perform a "graft tissue operation". This operation consists of first getting a suitable donor oyster (much like expecting someone to donate a much needed kidney) to strip it of its mantle tissue. This long piece of tissue is then cut into smaller little pieces that we call "grafts", and finally they are put inside the oyster, just on top of the nucleus. If everything goes well, the oyster will survive, heal up, and pearl formation will start.

What is happening inside the Pearl Oyster?

Within the pearl oyster's soft tissues, a complex process is taking place: the little piece of mantle tissue, "grafts" itself into the surrounding tissues of the pearl sac, then it identifies the shell bead as mother-of-pearl shell and grows around it, covering entirely with nacre-secreting cells. What follows now is the slow deposition of nacre around the bead. After 18-24 months under culture, an oyster will  have coated the nucleus with millions of microscopic layers of nacre, and attaining a thickness between 0.8 to 2.0 mm (sometimes even up to 3.0 mm!), which makes our Sea of Cortez Pearls some of the finest Pearls in the World.

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