{"id":71948,"date":"2025-05-24T08:30:43","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T23:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/may\/24\/shimmering-with-an-opal-shine-new-zealands-unique-blue-pearls-face-threat-of-warming-seas"},"modified":"2025-05-24T08:30:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T23:30:43","slug":"shimmering-with-an-opal-shine-new-zealands-unique-blue-pearls-face-threat-of-warming-seas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=71948","title":{"rendered":"Shimmering with an opal shine: New Zealand\u2019s unique blue pearls face threat of warming seas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In New Zealand only a handful of farms produce pearls from abalone, known as p\u0101ua, but the molluscs need delicate conditions to survive<\/p>\n<p>Roger Beattie was diving off the Chatham Islands, about 800km east of New Zealand, when he saw his first p\u0101ua pearl. Beattie was familiar with p\u0101ua, the M\u0101ori word for abalone, and their iridescent shells of shimmering purples and greens. But the pearl that had formed inside was unlike anything he had ever seen, gleaming with layers of the p\u0101ua\u2019s natural colours.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just thought \u2018heck, that would make amazing jewellery,\u2019\u201d Beattie says.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/may\/24\/shimmering-with-an-opal-shine-new-zealands-unique-blue-pearls-face-threat-of-warming-seas\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In New Zealand only a handful of farms produce pearls from abalone, known as p\u0101ua, but the molluscs need delicate conditions to surviveRoger Beattie was diving off the Chatham Islands, about 800km east of New Zealand, when he saw his first p\u0101ua pearl. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4768,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,65,56,467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-environment","category-new-zealand","category-oceans"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71949,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71948\/revisions\/71949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}