I started reading the opening remarks and found this:
Ladies and gentlemen, just as the oyster produces the most beautiful pearl
only when it is faced with the irritating grain of sand, the greatest successes
have been achieved amidst the most difficult challenges.
This guy was in charge of the forum, I think. Too bad he is under the influence of silly fables. He wants sellers and customers to learn more about pearls. He needs to start with himself, like by reading Strack, for instance.
The following comment is is not for you who know how pearls are formed. I just hope that by repeating the truth in various different wordings every chance I get, I can actually teach a lot of people how pearls are formed and make a dent in that urban myth of a grain of sand.
I just can't resist saying that if grains of sand started nacre sacks, then natural pearls would be far more common than they are, because all wild oysters deal with sand a lot. Almost every wild oyster would be making pearls if sand were the cause! The sad fact is that oysters can easily deal with grains of sand by expelling them. Too bad, huh.
Sand virtually never gets inside the mantle tissue where the pearl sacks grow. It would have to be another agent that carries the sand into the mantle- along with a few loose epithelial cells, which actually form the nacre secreting pearl sack. This nacre sack produces the pearls. Fish bites, injuries to the mantle and parasites are the usual culprits initiating a pearl sack by carrying some epithelial cells into the mantle during their intrusions It not even irritants that directly cause pearl formation, it is only when the nacre producing epithelial cells get inside the mantle that pearls can be formed.
Not as easy to say as "a grain of sand", but once you understand how natural pearls are formed, you will understand why cultured pearls, with or without a bead inside must have a piece of epithelial inserted into the cut in the mantle (cultured freshwater pearls) or with a bead in the gonads (cultured sea pearls including akoya, south sea and tahitian pearls.
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Another mystery: Now you professional pearl impresarios, please tell me who is producing tissue-only South Sea Pearls, where, and why the GIA believes that, though they can't name any place where it is happening. This belief is devaluing a lot of natural pearls, suddenly hundreds of them are being found to be tissue nuked SSP and thus worth far less than naturals.
I hope Jeremy, TPP or Bo Torrey or someone, would report on this!
I guess the Atlantis Dubai has an IP address with a similar range to those Russian IPs you banned, Caitlin.
