making saltwater and freshwater techniques indistinguishable. They have also introduced a new type of culturing, nucleating with small tissue-nucleated pearls. Some of China's new pearls are all ...

Freshwater pearls are still cultured by inserting small pieces of native ... snail or insect to successfully attract specific fish, or in one case a type of salamander, to serve as hosts for their ...

Basically, there are four main types: Akoya pearls come from Asia ... though they are typically more charcoal than black.

Only oysters of the Ostreidae family can make pearls, but many other types of mollusks can produce these gems, such as abalone and paua (New Zealand abalone), conchs, freshwater mussels ...

The shiny layer inside the shell is called the nacre, or mother of pearl. HABITAT: Freshwater mussels live on river bottoms and most require clean, flowing water to survive and reproduce. RANGE: ...

Unfortunately, these days most marine and freshwater pearl species in the wild are critically endangered, with many on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and ...