Oyster Die-Off Takes Bite Out of Pearl Fortunes

Just over a century ago, an enterprising villager in this little fishing town on Japan’s Pacific coast robbed Mother Nature of one of her most charming secrets--how to grow a pearl.

Now, nature is striking back.

A mysterious disease has over the last several years almost made Japan’s pearl oysters an endangered species. Unless a solution is found soon, Japan’s venerable pearl industry fears it may be on the way out.

If the oysters die en masse again this year, “most of us will be forced to quit,” said Toru Nishii, a pearl grower who has been in the business for more than 40 years. “I’m afraid the entire industry will go belly up.”

The die-off is causing some shortages on the world market and prices are rising, people in the American gem trade report.

Devin Macnow, executive director of the Cultured Pearl Information Center, a trade group in New York, expects the shortage to push prices up by 10% to 15% this year.

Elizabeth Parker, an appraiser for Curt Parker Jewelers in St. Louis, offered a similar prediction, but considers that modest given the situation. “I was very pleased with the prices” at a fine jewelry trade show in June, she said. “They were not as high as I expected.”

Although the bigger and more expensive South Sea pearls from Australia and Tahiti are gaining ground, Japan’s Akoya cultured pearls still dominate much of the world market--including nearly 65% of sales in the United States.

But just keeping the Akoyas on the market has become increasingly difficult.

In 1996, only 56.6 tons of pearls were harvested in Japan, down 22% from the amount harvested in 1993, the year before the first widespread oyster deaths were reported. Those deaths were caused by a “red tide,” a deadly plankton called heterocapsa.

What is killing the oysters now is unknown, however, but it is undeniably deadly.

The mortality rate surged to more than 50% last year, much higher than the average of 20% to 35%, according to Fishery Agency statistics. Of the deaths, about 92 million--or nearly 55%--were first- and second-year pearl-bearing oysters.

Some marine biologists suspect viruses, but their findings have been met with skepticism.

“We haven’t been able to isolate any virus, at least at our lab here,” said Dr. Toshihiko Matsusato, a pathologist at the National Research Institute of Aquaculture. “It could be even something totally unknown.”

A government-led team recently speculated that the culprit might be a shellfish parasite called perkinsus, which devastated oysters in the Mississippi River delta nearly 50 years ago.

Since Kokichi Mikimoto, founder of Japan’s top pearl company, Mikimoto & Co., started the industry 105 years ago by learning how to induce oysters to grow pearls, technological improvements have made the process relatively easy and amazingly exact. Harvested pearls can even be given a tint of pink or extra glow.

But some pearl growers suspect artificial insemination and other scientific tinkering may have inadvertently spawned oysters that are more prone to disease.

“Decades ago, growing pearls was a lot of work, but oysters seemed healthier and happier” said grower Nishii.

“Today, the environment is terrible,” he said. “The ocean is polluted and oysters are artificially enlarged so they produce larger pearls. Something’s not quite right.”

Nishii said he has been forced to lay off seven of his eight employees over the last couple of years because of the oyster deaths. Many of his colleagues also cut down their purchases from Ehime prefecture in southwestern Japan.

Officials believe oysters grown in Ehime, which supplies 80% of the pearl oysters used in Japan, may have been the origin of the outbreak and are urging growers to stick with their local stocks.

For the time being, shrinking demand at home because of Japan’s recession and tighter purse strings around Asia because of its financial crisis have kept the lack of stock from driving up retail prices too far.

Philip Schneider, chief executive of International Cultured Pearls of the Orient Inc., a Chicago importer, said the weakness of Japan’s currency also is helping moderate price rises. In addition, he said, the Chinese are producing more Akoya pearls.

Japanese jewelers increased their pearl stocks when they first heard about the problem, but they say they could soon start to run out.

“So far we haven’t been affected,” said Hiroyuki Nakayama, owner of Yamato Bros. & Co. pearl shop at Tokyo’s posh shopping district of Ginza.

“But if the massive deaths continue this year, we’ll have a serious shortage of inventory.”

Laura Barge of the Associated Press in New York contributed to this report.