Nearly all the pearls today are "cultured," a process invented by Kokichi Mikimoto about 100 years ago.
Here's how to do it: Get a young, healthy oyster ( in tahiti, a :black-lipped" pinctada margaritifera).
Take a polished bead, made from the shell of a freshwater mussel, and a slice of frilly oyster flesh
(called the mantle) from a donor oyster. Gently insert the mussel head and the mantle into the oyster's
gonad sack. Give the oyster a few hours to recover ( about 10% die at this point ). next lower the oyster
into the sea, rotating it frequently to encourage roundness in the pearl. While underwater, the oyster
should begin coating the mussel bead with concentric rings of opalescent nacre, a calcium carbonate deposit.
At the end of two summers the oyster can be hoisted to the surface, the pearl carefully extracted, and
another mussel bead inserted. Unfortunately, only 5 % of the pearls obtained are of the finest gem quality.
And unless the process is done with surgical precision by highly skilled technicians, the chances of success
are zero.