Italian oyster farmers dream of pearls from warming Mediterranean

By Antonella Cinelli

GULF OF POETS, Italy – Pearls could soon be cultivated for the first time in European seas, as Italian oyster farmers seek to exploit an unexpected opportunity offered by the rapidly warming Mediterranean.

In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area about 100 kilometers from Genoa on the northwest coast of Italy.

Less than a year later, they are proliferating in what has historically been some of the coldest waters in the Mediterranean, more normally associated with other types of oysters used for food rather than jewelry.

“We are studying the possibility of producing cultured pearls here,” explains Paolo Varrella, head of a cooperative that has been farming edible oysters in the region since 2011.

The group has already reached out to pearl oyster producers in Mexico for advice on production techniques, Varrella said.

“The Pinctada radiata has been reported in the Ionian Sea around the island of Sicily since the 1970s, but it is only in the last decade that it has moved north” to the colder Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas, which bathe western mainland Italy, said Salvatore Giacobbe, professor of ecology at the University of Messina.

It is the latest in a series of warm-water alien species to enter the Mediterranean, which is warming due to climate change.

Manuela Falautano, a scientist at the Italian Institute for Environmental Research and Protection ISPRA, said the trend had seen “an exponential increase” over the past decade.

Some of these species are aggressive and disrupt fragile ecosystems. In some cases, such as the spotted pufferfish and the scorpionfish, they are also dangerous to humans.

The 2.5 million square kilometer (970,000 square mile) stretch of water that separates southern Europe from Africa and the Middle East is warming faster than the average for the world’s seas, Falautano said.

LOTS OF MONEY

Pearl production, more often associated with Polynesian atolls than the northern Mediterranean, is worth $11 billion a year worldwide, and Italian oyster farmers are keen to cash in.

Adriano Genisi, a pearl importer for more than 30 years, said Radiata could produce gemstones similar to the famous Japanese “Akoya” pearls, which are 5 to 9 millimeters in diameter and white in color with shades of gray, pink and green.

If all goes well, the first pearls could be harvested in about a year, he said.

Rising temperatures in the Mediterranean are also blamed for an increase in violent storms, such as the one that sank British entrepreneur Mike Lynch’s luxury yacht off Sicily last month, killing six passengers and the boat’s cook.

Franco Reseghetti, a researcher at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, said measurements taken in the Tyrrhenian Sea in December at depths of between 300 and 800 meters showed the highest temperatures since 2013, and he expects to see a further increase this year.

“The enormous amount of energy behind this warming can serve as fuel for devastating atmospheric phenomena” such as the violent storm that appears to have sunk the yacht off Sicily, Reseghetti said.

(Edited by Gavin Jones and Alexandra Hudson)