The first to grow pearls in quahogs

            When Brendan Breen learned in a University of Rhode Island aquaculture class how oysters make pearls – and more importantly, how to artificially trigger that process – he was energized. As a teenager he had worked as a commercial fisherman, owned his own fishing boat, and put in time at a Massachusetts aquaculture business, and he was looking for an entrepreneurial opportunity in the fishing industry. With that lesson in pearl culturing, he found what he was looking for.

            The Newport resident sought to become the first person to culture pearls in the Ocean State’s official state mollusk, the quahog. “I’m surprised that no one had even tried it before,

A quahog pearl cultured by Brendan Breen

because the anatomy of the quahog is similar to the oyster,” he said. “I figured there was no reason why I couldn’t do it myself.”

            It wasn’t easy. With funding from an undergraduate research grant from URI, he spent every available hour of his junior year studying mollusk biology and pearl culture and then working in a lab to devise a method to induce the quahogs to make pearls.

            “I had to be creative and figure it out for myself,” said Breen. “I had some mortalities in the beginning, but then I got to a point where I felt my method was pretty good. So I let the clams grow, and when I came back for my senior year, I continued minding them and taking notes. Just before winter break, I harvested some of them, and I was overjoyed to find that they had produced quahog pearls down to a T.”

            A year later, he has a patent pending on his pearl culturing process and a start-up company he calls Mercenaria, named for the Latin name of the quahog. While working full time as a seafood importer, he is culturing pearls as fast as he can and waiting for them to grow to harvest size at an undisclosed aquaculture farm somewhere in southern New England. The 18-month process means he won’t have pearls ready to sell until 2020, but that is giving him the time he needs to find business partners, jewelry designers and others with the expertise to help him build his business.

            Quahog pearls are noticeably different from those produced by oysters, according to Breen. Like the colors on the inside of the quahog shell, they can range from white to dark purple. And because they are made of calcite and aragonite, rather than the calcium bicarbonate of oyster pearls, they refract the light differently.

            “It has a different kind of shimmer to it, a brilliant depth to it in the light. That’s what distinguishes it,” he said. “So if you want to be connected to the ocean and high fashion, then the Mercenaria pearl will be something you can treasure and take around the world as a new means of expressing your love of the ocean.”

This article first appeared in the May issue of Newport Life magazine.