To grow a mabe pearl, minor surgery is performed on the organism: You carefully expose the mother-of-pearl shell (found under the mantle tissue) by means of a spatula and then you glue the mabe implant (usually made of plastic) to the shell, the animal is returned to its watery home and then you wait some 18 to 24 months for the mabe pearl to gain a thick nacre coating.

In this operation, one mimics the action of a "parasite" drilling through the shell, so the oyster is actually fooled into believing an intruder is inside. Thus, the oyster's mantle will cover the implant and then, slowly coat it up with layers of nacre.

The operation in itself is rather easy to perform. The task that is truly difficult is to take care of the oysters during the long pearl culture cycle, having to clean them every two months and keep them healthy until harvest arrives. But the next operation -to produce cultured pearls- is not an easy one...

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