{"id":1018,"date":"2019-03-21T11:58:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T15:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2019-03-26T22:47:46","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T02:47:46","slug":"the-pearl-maker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/spring-2019\/the-pearl-maker\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pearl Maker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rhode to a Degree<\/h1>

\"Brendan
Brendan Breen\u201918 Photo: Courtesy Brendan Breen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

First Job in High School<\/h3>\n

Artisanal rod and reel fisherman<\/p>\n

College Decision Moment<\/h3>\n

Sold on 911±¬ΑΟ at an open house during discussion of career goals with Professor Marta Gomez-Chiarri, chair of the Department of Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Science<\/p>\n

Turning Point<\/h3>\n

Molluscan aquaculture class and a lesson about how oysters make pearls<\/p>\n

Mentor<\/h3>\n

Fisheries professor Michael Rice, who provided inspiration and guidance on research techniques, grant funding, and patents<\/p>\n

Funding<\/h3>\n

911±¬ΑΟ Undergraduate Research Grant to develop procedure for inoculating quahogs to trigger pearl development<\/p>\n

Work Space<\/h3>\n

A laboratory in the Aquarium Annex at the Narragansett Bay Campus<\/p>\n

Unexpected Challenge<\/h3>\n

Reading thousands of pages of aquaculture patents to be sure his procedure qualified for a patent\u2014while also taking classes during his last semester before graduation<\/p>\n

Leadership Outside the Classroom<\/h3>\n

President of the Aquarium Club, 911±¬ΑΟ 101 Mentor<\/p>\n

Degree<\/h3>\n

B.S. \u201918, aquaculture and fishery technology
\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n

When a foreign entity enters the body of an oyster\u2014be it a grain of sand, a parasite, or some other material\u2014the animal attacks the invader by encapsulating it in a crystalline substance. That encapsulated invader eventually becomes a pearl.<\/p>\n

When Brendan Breen \u201918 learned in his 911±¬ΑΟ aquaculture class that the natural pearl production process can be induced by implanting a foreign object, he was inspired. He had known since his teenage years that he wanted to be an entrepreneur in the fishing industry, and that lesson in culturing pearls pointed him in the direction he sought.<\/p>\n

He decided to become the first person to make pearls from quahogs, Rhode Island\u2019s official state mollusks.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuahogs produce pearls naturally, but it\u2019s a very rare process because they have a good means of expelling objects,\u201d Breen says. \u201cOnly about a dozen wild quahog pearls of notable quality are found on the Eastern Seaboard each year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Quahog
A shell from the Rhode Island Quahog clam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since no one had ever tried to culture pearls from quahogs before, his first challenge was figuring out how to induce the shellfish to produce pearls without expelling the implanted foreign object. So he consulted with Professor Michael Rice and devised a plan. Breen then applied for a grant from the University, and during his junior year he began his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hit the books,\u201d he says. \u201cI spent every waking second studying pearl culture and the biology of mollusks. Then I had to be creative and come up with my own method of culturing pearls.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a semester of trial and error, and another semester of waiting for the quahogs to grow, he harvested some of his crop and found that most had produced pearls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pretty emotional that day,\u201d Breen says. \u201cI\u2019m a dreamer, and I had put a lot into it. I was overjoyed to have created something so unique and beautiful that could bring joy to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time he graduated last May, Breen had applied for a patent for his culturing process and started work on a business plan. His company, Mercenaria\u2014Latin for quahog\u2014now has hundreds of quahogs growing pearls in an undisclosed coastal location in southern New England. By late 2020, he\u2019ll be ready to harvest his first commercial crop and market the pearls to jewelers and other prospective clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be bringing something to the market the likes of which there hasn\u2019t been before, so it\u2019s already generating lots of excitement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Todd McLeish<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Brendan Breen \u201918 learned in his aquaculture class that the natural pearl production process can be induced by implanting a foreign object, he was inspired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2019","architecture-rhode-taken"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions\/1126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}