If it aint baroque, don't fix it!

This post is a nod to one of my favorite types of Tahitian pearls: baroques.

By definition a baroque pearl has one single trait that other pearl types (round, semi-round, semi-baroque and circled) share: no axis of symmetry.
In a recent post about circled pearls, I mentioned the confusion in the name "baroque" that I think can be attributed to the retail pearl scene.  It makes sense that retailers would want to simplify the world of potential pearl buying customers by calling circled pearls "baroques," surely in the logic that a circle is round and that would lead people to expect circled pearls to be round.  Imagine your  outrage at buying a strand of circled pearls, expecting them to be round and instead getting pearls with bands around them?

Truthfully, it's hard for me to imagine that sort of outrage because whether I bought something in a brick-and-mortar or online store, I would expect to see it first.  I guess this wouldn't be the first time things were dumbed-down for the buying public.  But what a tragedy!  If we call circled pearls baroques then what do baroques become?  If true baroques don't get their own name how do we go about celebrating what is so wonderful about them?

To me it's their quirky, free form that I like best.  Sometimes it can be subtle, throwing them just off of round and other times they can be far wilder.  We have seen pearls that look like Mickey Mouse, doves, hearts, baseball caps, seals... the list goes on an on.   Unlike all other pearl types, if you drill it through a baroque's roundest axis, it will wobble once spun on that axis.  The fun is in the wobble in my eyes because it is what protects them from looking like everything else.

And to me not looking like everything else is the single most glorious trait of Tahitian pearls.  Tahitian pearls break the mould of our very idea of what a pearl is supposed to look like.  Dark, rich colors are the predominant reason of course, but to me we should not leave the baroque out in the cold.  It should be celebrated for it's diversity of form and its break from our obstinate idea of a round pearl being the most sought after.

Jason Momoa, the new face of Conan the Barbarian, wearing a Tahitian pearl on leather.

 A friend of mine sent me this photo because I'm a huge Conan the Barbarian fan.  Haha, not really but the trailer sure looks like fun.

Tahitian pearls on leather are increasingly seen in the mainstream, something I knew in my bones would happen 13 years ago.

Before I took over at Kamoka, I worked hard for my father and saved up for a project of my own.  The money that I made under my dad I put aside and after finding a local partner, started my own farm on the island of Raiatea in 1997.  I was able to do this remotely while I kept working at Kamoka then at the end of 1998, my partner and I found ourselves with our first harvest.  As much as I'd like to take credit, I have to give it to my (now ex) partner.  We were in the process of sorting pearls when he disappeared for a little while.  He came back with a Cheshire Cat grin and a strange black cord around his neck with a pearl drilled (gasp!) all the way through with a monstrous hole.  "What do you think?" He asked to which I replied that it was horrible and how could he do that to one of our sacred pearls?  At the time, Tahitian pearls were new enough on the scene that the explosion of creativity had not happened yet.  They were worn nearly exclusively with gold.  The movie "Blood Diamond" with Leonardo Di Caprio was still 8 years off and the information available regarding the ethics of non-fairtrade gold was even farther away.

"I thought you might say that.  Here, I made one for you.  Put it on and tell me what you think tomorrow."

"Yeah, whatever.  If it'll make you happy."  I said as I tied it around my neck.

There was something enchanting about it.  Nearly immediately I realized that he was right.  The more I wore it the more I realized how perfect it was.  Tahitian pearls are fresh and modern still and back then they were practically screaming to be worn differently than traditional white pearls.

The farm was a casualty of the pearling industry crash in 2003 but from our humble little operation in Raiatea that day, the idea spread like wildfire.  Robert Wan went on to produce a successful though ill-tested product line with pearls and leather and simultaneously designers across the globe picked it up and ran with it.

At the end of 1999, my family and I moved to the main island of Tahiti and built a house in the sleepy end-of-the-road village of Teahupo'o.  Fate would have it that beyond being a garden of eden and idyllic setting to raise children, it coincidentally turned into the hub of the surfing world.  An annual contest called the Billabong Pro assembled the best surfers in the world and numerous surf industry players.  The wave at Teahupo'o (pronounced: cho-po-oh, not cho-poo) is still considered to be one of the scariest and most perfect waves in the world, ideal for top-tier surfing performance as well as a veritable media utopia.

The idea of a brand of simple, surf specific jewelry with leather instead of gold came back on the table and after overcoming a number of setbacks, the brand Mana was born with the addition of a couple of surfer friends.  Our project grew and soon we were selling product through a website as well as a number of surf shops across the world.  Though the project was cut short, we amassed an understanding of how to build a necklace that would resist the rigors of an ocean based lifestyle.  Our experience was that once men or women put our necklaces on, like us, they often didn't take them off.  Producing a non-metal based "jewelry" item that would last as long as possible and looked great became our goal.

Stay tuned for news about our upcoming line of leather based jewelry.

Circled pearls.

These are some circled pearls.  The ones in the background are in an oyster shell.  Circled pearls have rings that pinch into the pearl and strongly affect (for the best) the color.  Circled pearls are often the most lively and have more character than other forms of pearl with the possible exception of the free form baroques. 

In America circled pearls are often called baroques which is a shame because it leaves funky and fun baroques out in the cold with no label or recognition of their own.  I'll dedicate a future blog post to the forgotten baroques.

Videos from Tahiti

 

This is a short vid done by my friend Ryan Young, an accomplished videographer.  The music is written and performed by Marten Ten broek, a part of the extended Kamoka family.  Ryan and I did a photo shoot together for Transworld Surf and PADI Diving a few years ago.  Below is a trailer for the movie.

                                        

Back-packing Eastern Oregon.

This past week we set pearls and work aside, packed up the car and headed for the mountains.  Summer is fleeting here in the Pacific North West so we have been itching to get away from our home in Portland to enjoy it.  There's much to do here of course but having back-packed with our parents, Celeste and I were both keen to get our kids out to see what the higher elevations of Oregon had to offer.  We were familiar with the Sierras and Trinity Alps of California but neither of us had been in the back country of the Pacific Wonderland and after living here for a year now, we were way over-due.

Guided by our favorite wilderness author Douglas Lorain and his amazing book Backpacking in Oregon, we headed east for over five hours to the Wallowa Mountains.  I drove while Celeste and our good friend Sandra Bao (like Celeste, also a Lonely Planet guide book author) were in charge of piloting.  Sandra wrote the last Lonely Planet edition of Oregon so it was fortuitous and fun having her with us.


Our camp from below.

My pilots landed us in a very small town called Pondosa.  Technically it was wrong turn but a visit to the only store in town quickly reminded us that when traveling the voyage is often the destination.  The "store" was the home of a sweet elderly couple who were obviously glad for our unlikely visit.  They showed us pictures of the Pondosa they knew 30 years prior and the sawmill and buzz of activity that surrounded it.  Their home has 12 rooms upstairs that used to lodge two men in each room.  Now, the cobwebs and musty air are testament that all has been quiet for many years.  They proudly showed us t-shirts and newspaper articles that claimed Pondosa to be the geographical center of the United States (Hawaii and Alaska included).  A Google search would later contest it but we were glad to have journeyed to such a self-declared power center.  After a half an hour we waved goodbye to them and their numerous spooky cats and got on our way.

As we climbed in altitude the desert and rolling dry hills that we had been in for hours gave way to lush pines.  On arriving at the trail head we breathed in the thinner, pine heavy air and eagerly hoisted our heavy loads onto our backs.  I was barefoot and was immediately glad to be so.  I found that curving my feet and gripping my toes gave me considerably better traction than stiff-soled hiking boots.  Balance with the heavy pack was easy and walking through the  rushing streams was a joy instead of something to be avoided.  Celeste quickly became frustrated by her flip flops and abandoned them then our son Tevai's waterlogged skate shoes came off, soon followed by Jasmine's.

The trail climbed steadily and followed a stream, noisily plunging over giant granite boulders.  About a mile into the 4.1 mile hike we met a ranger on the way down.  Dennis was an affable mix of John Denver and Willie Nelson and was clearly in his element.  He was impressed by our lack of shoes and asked us if we had filled out the honor system visitor's permit at the trail head.  We had and after checking it with some spectacles hanging from his neck he explained that it was an important detail because it helped them track the number of visitors which in turn was helpful for their annual budget demand.  Funding for the work of the Oregon Parks and Wilderness has been getting slashed to the point of it being a struggle to do their job.


The noise of the stream became more distant as the trail climbed away from it then finally we entered a meadow where we were to make our camp.  Ranger Dennis was spot on when he said that we would be singing at the sight of it.  The meadow which was bright green and full of wild flowers was met by the harsh white of granite rubble mixed with pines making for a perfect alpine effect.  There was a small island and Tevai suggest we cross the stream to what looked like a campsite on the other side.  A campfire circle awaited us with several perfect places to pitch our tents.


Glorious Looking Glass Lake.

Tevai and I got busy answering the question of what we were going to have for dinner.  We could have literally and easily caught trout from our tents but we struck off to explore and found that the Brook trout were abundant and eager to gobble whatever we threw in the stream.  We ate trout every night and Tevai surprised us all by pulling 13 and 12 inch fish from gorgeous Looking Glass Lake the day after our arrival.  Brook trout over 11 inches are uncommon so the three plus mile hike to the spectacular lake was more than worth it.

The meadow on the other side of the creek from our campsite had veins of tiny streams cutting through it with freezing cold water rushing to meet the main stream.  In some places the streams were a foot wide and two feet deep but incredibly enough were full of trout.  The fine art of "trout tickling" quickly ensued and we had a beautiful specimen for dinner in no time.  To "tickle" a trout, you have to first flush them out with your hands and feet.  Once you locate them you have to murk up the water just upstream of where your trout is hiding.  You then put both hands under the bank and slowly find your trout.  If you are gentle enough, they will stay put as you close both hands around them.  There's something primal and deeply satisfying about it but most of all it's a great recipe for wet fun.  Back at the main stream Sandra caught her first trout on a rod and was instantly "hooked" on the craft of fishing in a small stream.




Nightfall was always an occasion to look forward to.  The moon was waxing and nearly full on our last night making for some fun night photography; making me glad I lugged my photo equipment up the mountain.  Despite the warm days, it got very chilly as the sun went down so a campfire at night was the routine.  This was cause to partake in the fine American tradition of melted marshmallows and chocolate on graham crackers ie: s'mores.



On the way home Sandra "steered" us to the cowboy town of Pendleton that boasts a massive rodeo called the Pendleton Round-up that has been going since 1910.  It's also the home and factory location for the wool clothing brand Pendleton but most of all it's a slice of American life that felt strangely foreign to us.  A big Dodge truck with an "Obama bin lyin' bumpersticker was a mirror to the Prius with the Palin/Sheen 2012 sticker we saw on the way out of Portland.


Getting to know some of the breath-taking scenery and wildlife as well as the long roads and endless horizons that are part of a road-trip in America, help me to feel like life in this country is something I can claim as my own.

Celeste wrote a post while I wrote this one so for a different perspective please check out her popular blog at http://www.coconutradio.blogspot.com/

Night photo.

 

This is a photo I took on my last trip to the farm.  The shine on the buoy is from a full moon that came up a little before the sun went down over the land.  The strings hanging are what we use to tie the oyster strings temporarily to the platform so that we can easily access them to work on.  I've never seen a starrier sky anywhere in the world.

Update.

Last weekend I joined friends in the pearl community for good times and pearl-related activities in LA.  The party was hosted by a good friend and retail pearl genius Jeremy Shepherd of Pearl Paradise.  I flew to the Bay Area then met up with another great friend Sarah Canizzaro of Kojima Pearl.  Sarah did a brilliant job of blogging about the weekend which can be found here on her website.

After the party, I had the opportunity to get in the water just north of Malibu and was pleasantly surprised to find some excellent spearfishing.  On the flight from LAX to Oakland I packed some fish into my carry-on and I couldn't believe it when the TSA agents didn't notice them in the x-rays.  I spent the rest of the week visiting with family and friends in Marin County.  Highlights were seeing old friends and getting some good surfing in with my soon-to-be brother-in-law.
The photo above is of the solar panels that provide our farm with the energy we need for our operation.  On the horizon you can just make out the far side of the atoll so it's easy to see how such "big sky country" is ideal for solar energy.

The silent work force. (part two)

Two remoras hang from their suction-cup heads while Kamoka's silent work force happily nibbles away.

As the morning wore on and the piles of pipis, etc accumulated I noticed that when I went to fetch more cords of oysters from the temporary holding platform in front of the farm, they would be increasingly clean.  As a child I had always been mesmerized by fish and growing up I told myself that someday I would live where I could feed fish outside my door.  Now, I was watching fish feed every day which was (and still is) a huge delight.  The early years of the farm were all about hard work and we were fully committed to getting the job done, no matter how tired, stung or otherwise tortured.  So when I told suggested to my father Patrick that I thought we might not need to scrape the oysters at all, I wasn't surprised at his reaction of exasperation.  What had I learned in school in America and when would I start to work like a man?  I wasn't sure what I had learned in school either but I was pretty sure that the fish were ready to do our job for us.

It quickly became obvious to both of us that scraping oysters clean was a thing of the past.  My father designed several underwater platforms in shallow zones where fish were numerous and soon we were cleaning huge numbers of oysters by simply leaving them on the platforms for a day or two.

As time went on, it also became obvious that our fish populations were thriving.  Even more exciting was a strengthening of all the species across the board.  I visited a farm in Manihi once that had an unnaturally large population of Kotimu (Sergeant Majors).  They are an aggressive fish and their numbers had ballooned due to the habit the farmer had of throwing his oyster scrapings and table left-overs into the water.  Letting the fish clean the fouled oysters didn't have this effect because the surface area to be cleaned was just too vast for one species to dominate.  It also became clear that different fish were suited to eat different things.  The delicate butterfly fish could stick their pointy snouts into crevices and extract the anemones, the brutish parrotfish went straight for the pipis that they found a welcome change from the coral they usually grind,  the surgeon fish devoured any form of algae and on it went, every organism that had taken up residence on the oysters was dutifully removed by it's corresponding fish.

According to the account of early explorers, these desolate atolls had fish populations many times more robust than they are today.  I believe that Tahitian pearl farming done in the way we do it at Kamoka can help to restore fish stocks to their original states.  I believe this is one of many reasons that makes Kamoka tahitian pearls the most ecologically sound pearls in the world and makes them truly something that we can feel good about wearing.

The silent work force. (part one)

Farmers typically grow their oysters far off the lagoon floor so, much like a sailboat's hull that fouls up, they become homes to whatever finds them.  Our oyster, the Pinctada margaritifera, is a lover of clean water so it is typically farmed near the surface, in depths of normally 20-60 meters deep.

Just about everything in the ocean starts life so small that it has no choice but to drift with the current until it either develops it's own means of locomotion like fish or it finds a place to settle.  Pearl oysters provide such a place so if they are left alone they essentially begin to turn into living reefs, complete with corals, crabs, anemones, fish, sponges, you name it.  One of a pearl farmer's biggest and dirtiest jobs is removing these competing species so that the oysters can be healthier and thus create more beautiful pearls.  For years we did as the few other farms did, scrape endlessly only to scrape again a short time later.  Very much a marine version of Sisyphus and the rock he pushed up a hill.

Early one morning like all the other mornings, we had gone out to get strings of grafted (seeded) oysters that had young pearls growing in them for three months.  At the time of nucleation they had been perfectly clean and now just 90 days later they were unrecognizable with "bio-fouling."  Each string had ten oysters spaced out evenly over six feet of cord but only rarely could you even tell that an oyster was there.  The most aggressive of the real estate claimers is an oyster species called Pinctada maculata, locally known simply as "Pipi."  In some atolls, they grow abundantly in zones where fish are few and are well known for their prized natural pearls, "poe pipi" (poe = pearl in Tahitian).  To Tahitian pearl farmers they are a scourge though, competing for food and oxygen by carpeting the species farmers try to cultivate.

Anemones were spread throughout the pearling islands and atolls in the early to mid 90's by farmers buying oysters from neighboring islands where they were either cheaper or more readily available.  With no shell or exoskeleton to grow, they typically out-compete everything, growing shockingly fast in a matter of days only.  They sting the outer lip of the oyster they grow on, crippling it and severely affecting pearl quality.  Worse still is that they often detach or break into bits when we dive to move the oysters around.  Contact with the skin feels like middle ground between a mosquito and bee sting.  After a dive with anemones, swollen faces and stings on various body parts are often the case.

For part two, please tune in next week.

Running free.

Photo: Jasmine HUMBERT


When we moved to America from Tahiti last summer we packed up our house, put most of it in a container then flew off with just a few bags.  The most amazing part of the experience was living the three months with only a few items of clothing and some random things that didn't make it into the packing boxes.  When the container finally showed up, I half wanted to make a big bonfire and start this new adventure in our lives with less STUFF.  I've always prided myself on living outside of the habits of modern consumer society but here was a mountain of things that we didn't need.  An undeniable litmus strip of truth in the form of 57 boxes.

Back up three months from then and we had freshly arrived.  The departure from Tahiti had been a nightmare for me for many different reasons then just days before leaving, a dear friend who had been one of the pillars of the pearl farm in it's early years, passed away in the prime of his life, adding a dimension of difficulty I was totally unprepared for.

At an hour and half's distance from the ocean, I knew that my outlet and source of comfort that I had relied on for the last couple of decades was out of reach.  Sure I'd be able to get away to the coast every now and then but my daily fix would have to be closer.  In high school I was crazy into running cross-country so the choice was obvious that I would rekindle a love for running that had been sleeping for many years.

The Oregonian interviews me about running barefoot.

My running shoes however were boxed up in a container, cooking on a dock somewhere in the tropics.  Being too cheap to go out and buy new ones, I went to the trails anyway and discovered the magic of running without shoes.  I had run without shoes a few times back in high school but more as a lark than anything else.  The Nike waffle tread was all the rage and our cross-country team even built a ten foot long shoe every year affectionately named The Great Nike that (legend had it) would alight on the roof of the school gym the Friday before Halloween.

To my surprise running didn't make my body sore any more the way I remembered it.  Not long after starting I Googled barefoot running and my jaw dropped on seeing that there were weirdos online all over the world (but mostly in America) that were running un-shod and loving it like I was.

A Youtube frenzy followed and I learned how researchers have shown through treadmill impact tests that running with padding on your feet makes you come down dramatically harder on them than having no shoes at all.  Other videos showed slow motion images of how the arch of the foot is SUPPOSED to collapse with every foot strike.  In the running culture I used to be a part of in the late 80's this stuff would have gotten you hanged by your shoe laces.  The more I learned about how good it was to run without shoes the more it excited me.


How many other things do we take for granted as necessary that we could live very well without?

Pearl pirates, yarrr! (part two)

The sound of the approaching boat became louder, confirming our guess that it was our neighbor with his rowdy friends on their way home from a bender in the village on the other side of the atoll.

“We better go have a look,” my father said in French.  I knew he was right, but having never been in a fight in my life, the idea of confronting a boat of several big, probably drunk guys made me feel more than a little unsure.

We hurried to our aluminum boat, grabbing a fish gaff and a broom-length hardwood dowel heavy enough to knock out an elephant.  I really, really didn’t want to use either, but I wanted even less to be left with only my bare hands.

After firing up the outboard, we cast off from the dock into the moonless night while the wind whipped the chilly lagoon water at us.  After driving into the chop for 400 meters, we spotted the boat stopped where we had expected it to be.  I could feel my heart slamming in my chest.  We could barely make out several people in the darkness, including one getting back into our neighbor’s flimsy wooden boat.  My father threw a volley of insults at them to which we could just make out their replies over the roar of our motor and the white noise of the wind.  Much yelling followed but my fear dissipated as I realized that the only defense or offense we needed was our own v-bottomed aluminum boat.  If push had come to shove, it would have been very easy to sink their boat with ours.  They hurriedly got their motor started as we circled them again and again, and finally they puttered off into the night in the direction of their islet.

The next day a check on our oysters showed that the bandits didn’t have enough time to steal any.  Although relieved, I knew that the bandit situation would have to be resolved soon.  Our work was strenuous enough that we didn’t need the added strain and mental torment. 

A few days after the incident, a supply boat came with some of our gear, so we put work aside and boated the 6 km to the village where it docked.  At the time of this story (early nineties) there was no airport in Ahe yet; all supplies were delivered by cargo ships, whose rotations were notoriously irregular.  To locals, it always seemed like a small miracle when the cargo ships actually appeared. It was never all business when a supply boat came though: all the farmers whose homes and farms were spread out over the atoll would come together for some much needed socializing. 

We squeezed in between two boats and waited on the dock with some friends while people milled around.  I realized suddenly that Floresse was just a few meters away, on a path to walk by us, unaware of our presence.  My father saw him too and immediately jumped up to step in his path.  At my father’s height of 5’6”, Floresse could have almost stepped over him.  I jumped up as well and winced in anticipation as my father reached up to shove him in the shoulder, asking him angrily what it was going to take for him to leave us alone.  I saw Floresse stiffen and clench his hands but instead of taking a swing, he looked around at the crowd that had formed and to my surprise backed away.

The following week found us again at the village waiting for supplies.  This time we were sitting with our feet over the dock when Floresse approached.  Strangely, I hardly recognized him.  He hadn’t changed in any obvious way but just looked smaller.  He looked meek and embarrassed and smiled showing good will.  He explained in a tiny voice that he had come to excuse himself for the bad feelings and that it wasn’t his idea, it was the others that had pushed him to be that way. 

On a small island, the necessity of getting along with others is heightened in a way that is hard to understand for continent dwellers.  This was my first major lesson but far from my last or most adventurous.

To this day, twenty years later, we still have never had oysters disappear from our waters.  Pearls on the other hand are far easier to abscond with but that is a different story.

Pearl pirates, yarrr! (part one)

 

 

I could feel it in my eyelids as well as my legs and back and arms.  The moment I savored most each day was coming fast.  Pulling a sheet over me and laying my head on a pillow could only be described as sublime.  My dad Patrick, thirty-some years older and in his early fifties, had worked all day just as hard (if not harder), and I knew he was feeling it too. It was 9:20 PM and we both should have been fast asleep.
That day, like every other day of the week excepting Sundays, we had been up before dawn, worked all day and well into the evening, and were absolutely worn out when the moment came to shower and climb into bed.  Much of our work was underwater with compressed air sent to us via a hose called a “hookah rig.”  Our work below the surface was limited to the time it took for the compressor to use up a full tank of gas (about 6 hours).  The advantage was obvious over traditional bottle diving but for better or worse, it allowed us to spend blocks of time underwater that were long enough to drain us of every drop of energy.

Above water, we spent daylight hours preparing oysters to be sold to other farms who had the means to graft (or seed) pearls.  This was an endless job of first retrieving the oysters where they grew suspended over deep water, and then bringing them to the farm for processing—which involved gently removing them from their lines and drilling them with small holes to be hung again.  This work was a means of spacing out the oysters for optimum growth and tracking quantities.
Our night-time work was primarily tying knots so we would have “chapelets” or strings the next day for hanging oysters.

On this night, as we were settling in after an exhausting workday, a far-off drone became audible over the din of the trade winds that battered the farm night and day.  We both sat up and listened as a boat approached our plot of lagoon water.  We knew it was our neighbor Gilles.  He was a quiet guy who had come to live in Ahe from his native New Caledonia.  We had never had any problems with Gilles, but lately he had been rolling with a rough crew headed by Floresse, another new-comer who like Gilles had been attracted to the atoll by tales of easy money.  

Floresse stood at about 6 feet 4 inches.  Atop his broad, square shoulders was a head with wild sun-bleached locks of hair and small, light eyes fixed in permanent squints against the harsh tropical sun.  Despite his flowery name, his often intoxicated state made him prone to abusive language, which he had recently been yelling in the direction of our farm at night on his way to party with our neighbor.

Though we didn’t have pearls growing in them yet, our oysters represented serious sweat equity as well as monetary value, and oyster bandits are a problem that troubles every pearl farmer's sleep.  Polynesians especially are natural swimmers and divers—the thought of jumping into night water, diving 30 feet in the blackness and groping around for oysters won’t slow many of them down.

(Part two coming next week)

A day in the life of Kamoka Pearl.

 Spending the majority of my time now in Portland, OR I feel like I need to qualify what a "typical day" on the farm means to me.  My continuous days of non-stop pearl grafting are seldom now and I only occasionally get back to the farm.  Timi, Laurent, Heiarii and my father Patrick are faithfully there though so I want to walk you through a typical day in their board shorts.

An ordinary day on the farm starts at about 6:00 in the morning.  Laurent climbs down from the crow's nest, the control tower/crash-pad that can be seen in any picture of the farm.  He puts on a kettle of hot water while the other filter in.  The rest of the crew live on one of the two "motus" or islets in the atoll that make up the land mass of Kamoka Pearl.  With a little luck there will be a volunteer or two (sent out from the WWOOF Organization, www.wwoof.org) that has made fresh bread for a Euro-style breakfast.


After cups of black instant coffee get tossed back and bread is slathered with canned NZ butter and inhaled, gears click into place.  Heiarii and Laurent grab freediving gear and do a quick run out to the lines to get oysters for Timi to work on for the day.  The oysters grow on horizontal polypropylene lines that are from 200 to 600 meters in length and submerged at about 7 meters of depth over 40 meters of clean lagoon water.

While Laurent and Heiarii are diving, Timi is sharpening his scalpels, pouring his nuclei and filling a water bottle for some long hours in his chair.  Meanwhile, Heiari'i is opening oysters from the previous day and starting the painstaking process of searching for oysters that have a sufficiently colorful shell.  Once he finds these rare beauties, he'll put them aside and use them throughout the day for tissue donors.  A tissue donor is an oyster that is selected for it's exceptional color and then processed for it's mantle organ.  The mantle is what secretes the shell so in choosing shells of a particular color, we can influence the eventual color of the pearl.  One donor oyster will usually provide 20 -30 mantle pieces.



Soon after the divers return, Timi will have a tray full of oysters that Laurent has wedged gently open and held that way by pegs, usually made from clothes pins.  He'll then implant each oyster that he deems ready for the operation with a nucleus and a piece of living mantle tissue that he has prepared.  His challenge will be to graft as many oysters, as well as he can before lunch.  His dexterity will determine the quality of the pearls, the success rate and the number of oysters that make it safely through the operation.  All of the investment of a pearl farm rides on the shoulders of the grafter so predictably many farms have been sunk by sub-par grafters.  It's a job that requires skill, patience and long hours of practice to reach a passable status.  Timi joined the team in 1993 and has been grafting for about 12 years.  His mastery of the craft is immediately obvious to anyone who has the pleasure of observing him.

At lunch time, everything will get a saltwater wash down with a firetruck style black hose and the whole crew will stop for a needed break and food.  Food is usually rice with fish or chicken with some sort of salad that often will have some raw oyster muscle (that tastes a bit like a scallop) in it seized lightly with lime or vinegar (yum!).



Everybody helps with the cleaning and dishes and after about an hour has passed, work sparks back up until around 3PM.  The oysters that have been grafted throughout the day will then get brought back out to the lines, away from the farm where the water is most free from silt.  Timi is usually quick to join the dive crew as a dip in the lagoon is more than welcome after a full day of sitting in a chair.

After a final clean-up the crew will often throw freediving gear and spearguns in the boat and head to the pass for some fish, adventure and fun.  As well as being great exercise and a guaranteed good time, it's also a moment of camaraderie.  A tight-nit team is crucial to the overall health of the farm and the oysters as well as the quality of the pearls.

This is a fly-over account of a typical day.  If anyone wants more details about different parts mentioned above, please just leave questions in the comments below.  Thanks!

Photos

My recent two week trip was full of photo goodness, from trippy moonlight photography to oil-still lagoon water, to pearl product photography on an unexpected model who was volunteering at the farm.  Here's a moonlit shot of Alain and I enjoying the warm breeze on the cabin of my dad's boat.  The lights on the horizon are the village of Uturoa and the lights in the sky are stars.  For more photography of Polynesia, pearls and surfing please check out www.joshhumbert.com.

Adventures with the pirate.

I wrote the last blog post while floating on the sublime lagoon of Raiatea, the birthplace of Polynesian culture.  The hazy but majestic crag of Bora Bora sat on the horizon behind me while verdant Mount Temehani rose up in front of where my father's boat was tied up to a mooring.  Blue skies revealed the colors of the land and water that make Polynesia such a consistent draw for honeymooners.  A 20 knot trade wind tore down off the mountain keeping things blissfully cool in the shade of the cockpit. 

My father and his friend Alain had just arrived after an eventful crossing from New Zealand, complete with near hurricane strength winds and equipment failure that forced them to limp into port for repairs in Rarotonga.  The low pressure system that did the damage was so vast and powerful that the 747 that brought me to Tahiti from California tacked on more than two hours to avoid the worst part.

My father, Patrick Humbert will be 70 in less than two months.  I can't exactly say that he is slowing down though.  A few years ago he encountered a storm so violent between New Zealand and New Caledonia, he lost all navigation control and had to call out an S.O.S. that was picked up by a military ship.  The massive rescue ship offloaded his shaken crew but in the rough conditions came terrifyingly close to shredding the boat with it's giant propeller that was churning, half out the water.  In a scene straight out of a real life James Bond movie, he cut the rope that tied him to the behemoth just in time, saving himself and his boat.  He declined further help then drifted happily alone on ocean currents for several days until finally being close enough to New Caledonia to call a friend for a tow in to safety.

I was alone because I had flown in to visit with him but as my plane was touching down I saw the boat headed toward the anchorage and still a little ways off.  When I got my luggage, he was nowhere to be seen so I asked a friend I happened to meet at the airport for a ride to the anchorage, in hopes of catching him before he headed off to get me.  I hitched a ride in a dinghy with a yachty, hoping to surprise them on the boat but when I got there they had gone to pick me up.

An exhausting but awesome week of harvesting pearls and accumulating sleep deprivation had me nodding off after an hour of reading and writing.  I awoke to a clang and a jerk that can only be described as feeling wrong.  I jumped up and noticed straight off that the two spear-like hulls of the catamaran were no longer pointed at the mountain and into the whipping trades.  In a mounting panic I ran to the front of the boat to have my fears confirmed.  The mooring had broken and we were now headed backwards towards an expensive charter catamaran with no one on board.  I yelled out lamely for help but only one person was watching and he called out for me to drop the anchor.  Right.  Easy.  But how?  I figured that the controls would be in the cabin so I rushed in to find nothing, cursing myself for not being able to remember from the last time, ten years earlier, I had been aboard.  Just as we started to get perilously close to the charter boat, the wind shifted, turned and started pushing us forward now towards a freshly painted yellow,racing catamaran.  This time the business end of the boat was headed like two massive javelins unavoidably, certainly towards disaster.

I hurried onto one of the hulls and shimmied like a monkey forward on the slick aluminum, focusing hard to not fall off.  I reached the front just before impact and made a bridge with my body, Wiley Coyote style, that got accordioned together until I couldn't take it any longer.  The second hull slowed greatly and ended up giving the hull of the yellow catamaran the tiniest kiss as the back of the boat was now getting caught by the wind, whipping our boat out to clear water away from the other boats.

A second, less hurried look at the anchor revealed how to get it down so I finally dropped it in over 30 meters of depth and breathed one massive sigh of relief as I felt the anchor dig in.  My father and Alain got back about 20 minutes later.  I was greated (in French) by, "you little $h!t, we've been looking all over for you!" To which I replied, "Wow, sorry.  By the way, is this where you anchored?"  His eyes went wide as he looked around and realized that no, it wasn't.  We all laughed about it later over some good French wine and grilled fish.

Kamoka Pearl Blog intro.

This first blog post is intended for those of you not familiar with our story.  For those of you who know us there might be things of interest too. :)

While I was in Ahe this past week, harvesting pearls and soaking up the things I love about the pearl farming life, I reflected back on this 38 year voyage of my family's.

My earliest memories are all connected to fishing events like getting pulled into the water while shore fishing at the pass and the sting of being too young to go live-bait fishing at night in the outrigger with my brother, dad and Raumati, our island mentor.

The memories go on and I now suspect that they were linked to the vague feeling of un-ease I felt during my last years of student life in America.  The feeling was lifted when I went to visit my father in hopes of being helpful in his brave new endeavor of farming pearls.  He had just relocated to Ahe after living on the main island of Tahiti for 15 years.

My father had previously made his living as a fine wood worker/builder and the last thing he built in his shop was a beautiful little wooden boat.  It was with that seaworthy craft that he started his next business and turned the page to a new chapter in our family's life.  The feeling of coming home and the excitement of being pioneers in a new industry kept me on and I was joined by my girlfriend Celeste a couple years later.  We married soon after and raised our two children there.

The process and the people that made up my pearl farming existence have been instrumental in my coming of age.  I am grateful for that and have long wanted to communicate our family's story and values through pearls.  For many years I thought I could channel it through the good people who resell our pearls who can be found on our Friends and Partners page.  Also, the logistical complications of dispatching product from Tahiti has been a major roadblock in our pearls arriving at their final destination.

Change has been in the air for us though.  The demands that come from putting family (and especially children) before all else, have relocated my immediate family to a colder but endlessly interesting existence in Portland, Oregon, USA.

Ten years ago my father immigrated to New Zealand for the educations of my younger brother and sister.  As chance (if you believe in that sort of thing) would have it, his New Zealand chapter ended almost at the exact moment our Portland chapter began.

In my mind, the circumstances are evidence of a feeling that I've always had.  Kamoka has it's own heartbeat.  It is bigger than me, my father or the innumerable employees, volunteers, friends and family that have participated over the farms 20 year's of existence.

Thank you for reading this far and for tuning in while we embark on the final chapter of our pearl's journey.