Arapawa Blue Pearls

The Pearl Processing
Our Paua are wild stock from the cold waters of the Cook Strait where our family dive the waters hunting for the perfect Paua stock to grow our pearls in.
We are very selective, and one out of five Paua that we harvest have the right colour, lustre to be high enough quality to grow the pearls of the quality we require.
The remaining 80% of the Paua that we harvest go for live export to the high end Asian customers.
The next step in the process is inserting the Mabe inserts into the selected Paua. This is done here on our farm by our family using specially built equipment that we have designed for the job.
Paua are put in 30degree water to help become more docile to work with. The shape of the pearl is decided by the shape of the insert. We use 11 different shapes. We also use different method of keeping the inserts in place.
We then on grow the Paua for 3 to 4 years in our Aquaculture facility at Whekenui Bay in the Marlborough Sounds. During that time the Paua are fed natural seaweeds. The Paua put alternating layers of Conchiolin and Nacre over the insert, to build up a thick coating of shell of the shape of the insert that was put in the particular animal.
At harvest time we remove the meat from the shell and it goes to local New Zealand markets and restaurants.
The Mabe pearls are then cut out of the shell and are processed and polished. The pearls are then graded by our expert pearl technicians and ready for sale.