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

Figure 2. Typical coastal habitat for much of Solomon Islands. Fringing reefs, a mix ofhigh and low-lying islands and freely exchanging lagoon structures prevail. Closed orsemi-closed atolls are rare.The prevalence of fringing reefs rather than atolls contrasts with the situation in the CookIslands and French Polynesia, where black pearl farms are typically based in atolls whereblack-lip pearl oyster reach their maximum abundance. Growth rates of oysters withinthese nutrient-poor lagoons are, however, less rapid than outside of the lagoons. Goodresults of grow-out of black-lip pearl oyster in Fiji and Solomon Islands confirm that,provided the requirement for high-quality water is met, fringing reef lagoons andembayments can be suitable sites for cultivating black pearls. We note that SolomonIslands has one of the world’s largest atolls, Ontong Java, at 5 o S latitude, but there is noinformation on the status of pearl oysters there; it may be too far north and too warm forblack-lip pearl oyster culture.3.2 Spat collection and growoutPrevious research programmes targeting pearl farming have yielded a good deal ofinformation on the black-lip pearl oyster in Solomon Islands. As this research wastargeted at modifying techniques in use in French Polynesia for Solomon Islands, thedifferences between the countries were investigated in detail. A feature of the atolllagoons where pearl cultivation has been developed in Polynesia is that they facilitatecollection of spat by trapping eggs produced within the lagoon. Spat is a key element ofblack-lip pearl oyster cultivation and spat collection in Solomon Islands is more difficultthan in these Polynesian farms due to the more open reef structures and greatermovement of water. However, research by the WorldFish Center has shown that spat can6