Stimulating investment in pearl farming in ... - World Fish Center

e successfully harvested from close to Solomon Island reefs throughout the country.Experimental spat collections have been made from Guadalcanal to Shortland Islands andmost regions had broadly similar spatfalls. Of the areas where high collections are mostfrequent, Western Province (see Figure 3 for locations) stands out, though even here theyield per spat collector can be low (an average of 1-12 per collector deployment) and isvariable between locations and years.ChoiseulManning StraightShortlandIslandsKiaWaghinaWesternSanta IsabelGizoNoroMarovoLagoonRussellIsalndslHoniaraGuadalcanalMalaita100 kmMakiraFigure 3. Map of Solomon Islands marked with provinces and main locations referred toin the text. The scale bar represents 100 km.A significant issue in Solomon Islands has proved to be the high predation on young spat,which led the experimental pearl farm to amend the traditional protocols for spatcollection and grow-out. Rather than leaving spat on collectors until they reach a sizelarge enough for hanging from grow-out line, as dine in French Polynesia, spat wereharvested from collectors at a small size (~10 mm) and an intermediate grow-out phasewas introduced until they reached the size for transfer to hanging culture. The labour costof this extra operation may be offset by the low labour costs in Solomon Islands (US$ 5-7per day for semi-skilled workers compared to US$ 50 per day in Tahiti – see latersections). Once established, however, grow-out of oysters can be rapid at SolomonIslands, with spat able to reach 100-120 mm in one year. This is six months faster than istypical of atoll farms in Cook Islands. Preparing the report summarising the informationon black-lip pearl oysters allowed Patrick Mesia from the Aquaculture section of MFMR7