History of Black Pearl
Black pearls are not necessarily black color. They range of color from a light to very dark gray, looks like green, pink, lavender, blue, brown so on.
La Paz in Baja California became the black pearl center of the world in the late 1700's and early 1800's, Slowly black pearls became very popular especially among European royalty, such as Empress Eugenie of France. But the oyster beds were overfished and black pearls became scarce.
Large percentage of the black lip oysters in the Gulf of California died for unknown reasons in the 1940's.
The first grafting experiments were done in the lagoon of Bora Bora and Hikueru in 1963. This was the beginning of cultured Black Pearl. Now Tahiti is main supplier occupy 90% of Black Pearls market. According to success of Tahiti, Cook Islands, Okinawa and Fiji cultured it, too.
Dealers of pearls from Tahiti and the other islands of French Polynesia are now marketing their pearls as "Tahitian cultured pearls" or "Tahitian South Sea cultured pearls".