The first village specializing in
mother-of-pearl sea cultivation of the northeastern region lies in
Vân Đồn island-district, 60km away from Ha Long City. This trade
has flourished over the past 40 years. The island-district of Vân
Đồn has 10,969 ha of tideland, and tens of thousands hecta of
water surface of bays, lagoons in Bái Tu Long Bay, which make them
ideal for promoting the trade.
Vân
Đồn boasts four kinds of
pearls: Mă Thi, Vo Dày, Cánh Dài, and Jamson, which are of high
export value. Given its vast water surface and favourable climate
and environment, Vân Đồn has advantageous conditions for
mother-of-pearl cultivation. Tourists can go boating to visit
different “sea farms” of mother-of-pearl cultivation. One will
feel surprised at and interested in the buoys and pearl cages
bobbing to the ebb and flow of waves. In the past,
mother-of-pearl cultivation followed manual techniques. Pearl
cages were hung at one end of bamboo poles. They were, therefore,
small in quantity and yielded low economic efficiency. Farmers now
have applied advanced techniques; for example, hanging the cages
at the depth of 2.5 meters so that in the ebb tide, they cannot
either float to the surface or sink to the seabed as other species
will eat the pearls or the pearls will suck mud. Another method is
to use bamboo poles to connect pearl cages into several hundred
square meter area, each cage is 0.5m away from each other. This
facilitates the cultivation of pearls of different ages.
