Sea of Cortez Pearls

[Roberto]

I have done a lot of Google searches but have come up with only a little information. Interesting that Pearls were the largest export from Mexico in the early colonial times. The first pearl cultivation was done in the Baja around 1900. There is a place in Guayamas producing cultivated pearls now. Most come from Asia at this point and natural Sea of Cortez pearls seem to be extremely rare.The photo below illustrates what are classified as natural baroque Sea of Cortez pearls. Interesting that these were recovered from a Spanish shipwreck along with gold and silver. I have seen some offered on e-bay at $300 each. Anyone know anthing? A friend's mother has some whe wants to sell. Need to set some value.

 

[jerry]

http://www1.american.edu/ted/pearl.htm. Liked this article...always heard the Japanese wrecked the beds in the 20s


http://www.cortezpearls.com/discover-cortez-pearls/cortez-pearls-jewelry-history-and-information-8.php. The good news

 

[jerry]

In the 1930s, three large pearl fisheries were established along the Sonoran coast-most of them focused on the Pteria sterna (or rainbow-lipped) rather than, as in the past, thePinctada mazatlanica (or black-lipped) pearl oyster. Although the former has a smaller shell and therefore produces smaller pearls than the latter, it tends to produce multi-colored pearls. So divers started to concentrate on gathering these pearls, selling most of them locally to merchants and tourists.

By 1935, it looked as if Mexico's pearl industry might stage a comeback.

Then disaster struck. In 1936, pearl oysters began unaccountably dying by the thousands, first in the northern part of the Gulf of California, then year-by-year farther and farther south. When in 1940 the Mexican government banned all oyster fishing in the Sea of Cortez, farmers had already named this plague "the Great Mortality."

For years, conspiracy buffs believed that the Great Mortality was part of a Japanese plot to wreck Mexico's pearl industry by poisoning its oyster beds.

Today marine biologists explain the catastrophe as an eco-crisis caused when Colorado's Hoover Dam began operating in 1935. By holding back Colorado River waters from the Gulf of California, it was deprived of essential nutrients. This, in turn, starved the plankton on which oysters feed and began a rapid chain reaction that quickly killed off most pearl oysters.

 

[Panamahat]

I have done a lot of Google searches but have come up with only a little information. Interesting that Pearls were the largest export from Mexico in the early colonial times. The first pearl cultivation was done in the Baja around 1900. There is a place in Guayamas producing cultivated pearls now. Most come from Asia at this point and natural Sea of Cortez pearls seem to be extremely rare.The photo below illustrates what are classified as natural baroque Sea of Cortez pearls. Interesting that these were recovered from a Spanish shipwreck along with gold and silver. I have seen some offered on e-bay at $300 each. Anyone know anthing? A friend's mother has some whe wants to sell. Need to set some value. View attachment 6610

All I know is they are expensive. I was in a Jewelry store on the Malicon. He sells real silver jewelry from Taxco. His pearls were multi hued and bluish in color. One pearl in a silver ring was around $250 to $300.