Ninety percent of the world's most valuable pearls cultured
The shellfish found along a few square miles of waterways in Benton
decorative County have a quality prized over mussels anywhere else. When their inner shells are ground into small beads — and inserted into oysters raised on farms in Asia — they grow into nearly flawless, round pearls.
Ninety percent of the world's most valuable pearls cultured in the past 50 years can trace their origins back to mussels harvested by Benton County divers.
Today, however, fewer people are buying on the world market. Several years of global recession, new and cheaper mass pearl cultivation techniques developed by the Chinese, and a series of environmental scourges among Japanese pearl farms have crushed what once was a $50 million per year shell export business down
decorative to about $4 million in 2009.
