• After being removed from the collectors on which they have developed, the young oysters are reared until they are mature enough to undergo the grafting procedure. It is  best to rear the oysters at establishments which have a pearl grafting workshop, so that they can become acclimatised to their new surroundings before undergoing this operation.

The rearing stage takes two years :

-    Young oysters  5 to 6 cm in diameter are placed in hanging baskets or latticed crates until they measure 8 cm.

-     When they have reached this size, they are either pierced and trussed up together (see photograph) in strings of 10 to 20 oysters, or placed in little individual baskets, where they are left  until they are grafted.

• At all the stages in their development, the oysters are regularly checked and cleaned, both at the surface of the sea and by skin-divers.

Every two months, the oysters are removed from the water to be washed and rid of their parasites. The parasites (mainly equibionts) are washed off either in a supersalted water bath or with a high pressure spray.

The rearing structures used are of two main types:

• Fixed platforms made of galvanised metal tubes, which have to be set on the sea bed at depths of 15 to 20 m. These structures and the constraints they involve limit the oyster rearing capacity of the lagoons. The strings of oysters are attached to  the regularly spaced transversal spars of the platform. This technique is now becoming obsolete, since the galvanised zinc tubes with which they are made have been suspected of polluting the water and causing abnormally high mortality rates among the oysters.  
  
  

• Floating platforms equipped with a system of ropes and buoys, which are moored to the sea bed and held at the depth required. This more natural method, which somewhat resembles the collecting technique, is easier to implement and can also be used in deeper waters. It considerably increases the oyster rearing capacity of the lagoons where it is used.

The aquacultural oyster rearing initiative was launched by a private, Mr Teva Yrondi, who works on Moorea, Tahiti 's twin island in the Society archipelago. The first pearl-producing firm to run its operations out of the sea has been rearing Pinctada margaritifera oysters in a natural sea-water pool in the bay of Paopao since 1995. Young oysters are imported and placed in the pool for two moths, and if they have adapted well to the change, they are grafted. In August 1995, six months after the first grafting operations, this experimental farm produced its first "mabe" (semi-pearls) and "keschi" (pearls with no nucleus). At the end of the first quarter of 1997, the first real pearls to be obtained in an artificial pool were eventually harvested. Although this production cycle was of a purely experimental nature and the quality of the products was not up to that of some of the most highly reputed Tuamotu atolls, this was something of a revolution in Pinctada margaritifera pearl farming circles. At the same time, Mr. Teva Yrondi is using the facilities available at his experimental aquacultural station to study the development and evolution of the diseases to which pearl oysters are prone