| Toward 1960, Jean-Marie
Domard, a veterinarian in charge of the Ranching and Fisheries Service,
began the first serious study of ways to grow cultured pearls in Polynesia.
In 1962 he brought in a Japanese specialist to graft 5,000 oysters,
and by 1965 they had obtained more than 1,000 cultured pearls of excellent
quality.
In 1966 in Manihi atoll, two brothers, Jacques and Hubret Rosenthal
established the first pearl farm in French Polynesia: the Manihi
Pearl Experimentation Company. Despite the difficulties that every
pioneer has to face, the Rosenthal's company prospered. Farms founded
later by Jean Claude Brouillet at South Marutea in the Eastern Tuamotus
and Robert Wan's farm at Mangareva grew even more spectacularly.
With the help of the Department of Fisheries, each atoll developed
its own pearl cooperative that sold its harvests of pearls at the
annual auction held in Papeete.
At this time, however, the biggest problem for pearl farms was
not the production of pearls, it was obtaining an adequate stock
of oysters. There are two ways of obtaining stocks of pearl oysters:
diving for them and collecting spats and raising the young oysters
to maturity.
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