Ras Al Khaimah's Pearl Culture

For much of the UAE's early history, resource production was restricted to the subsistence level. One of the only known industries designed to generate profit rather than purely pragmatic goods was the pearl industry. In the early 1930's the industry was almost completely wiped out when the Japanese discovered how to manually culture pearls, thereby making the pearl diving business almost completely redundant.

In recent years, however, the tradition of the pearl industry has been slowly revived. Though it is not economically feasible to continue the industry, pearl farmers in the UAE have adopted the Japanese method of pearl cultivating with great success. Favourable water and weather conditions give these farms a natural advantage over their international competitors, breathing new life into a once-famous sector of the Emirates' economy.

The Gazelle visited a Ras Al-Khaimah pearl farm, RAK Pearls, and followed the process of culturing a pearl step-by-step. RAK Pearls uses the Japanese culturing method, which involves implanting the lip of a "donor" oyster into its "recipients," which then grow their pearls around small balls. These balls are artificial, but their chemical composition is identical to that of their natural counterparts. Within six months the culturing process is complete, and the pearls are ready for extraction. Not all oysters survive, and not all pearls are of sufficient quality, but those that meet the standard can then be sold.

Above is the set-up for the implanting of donor tissue. The small white balls in the yellow container on the left are the base around which the pearl is grown. The bright red substance is the donor lip tissue, which is died with food coloring.