We always see some pearls are titled “natural pearls” in the market. Are they all natural? To answer this question, it's important to understand how pearls are forms.
Natural pearls grow in the wild without human intervention. It occurs when some form of irritant, for example a piece of shell or scale lodges itself into a pearl producing mollusk such as an oyster, mussel, or abalone. To protect itself from the foreign body, the mollusk forms a nucleus over the foreign element, and continues to coat it with layers of nacre over the next several years. It's like when the sand gets into our eyes, the tears came out. Even if the natural pearls were found, a very small portion of them can be called gem. Therefore, natural pearls are super rare. They may owned by the royals and the top rich people in the world, or be showed in the museum. Almost all the pearl we can see in the market are cultured pearls, including the freshwater pearl and seawater pearl.
So are the sellers deceiving consumers of naming the cultured pearls to “natural pearls”? Actually, when some customers are lack of knowledge about pearl, will think the opposite of “natural pearl” is “simulated pearl” or “fake pearl”, part of the sellers are lazy to explain the differences between “natural pearl” and “cultured pearl”. Over time, “natural pearl” is equal to “cultured pearl” in some real deal process sometimes.
