Salvagers flash their pearly whites

This was the one of the headlines in the Keys News today and I thought I would pass it along since many of you knew about the excitement when the box of pearls was found. I have also included the link to the news story on-line since there are pictures that I can't get copied to the blog. I have posted the story from the paper below so you can read that here.
http://www.keysnews.com/

Our friends who work at MF have been spending weeks and weeks going through all of these pearls to sort them for appraisals so we have been getting weekly updates on the progress.

Division takes place the first week in May and we are hoping to get pearls. I will let you know and post pictures.


BY MANDY BOLEN
Citizen Staff
The lustrous white and beige pearls that now fill an entire shelf bear little resemblance to the saturated mass of blackened BB-like orbs that divers recovered from the ocean floor 10 months ago while searching for the remaining treasure on the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita.
The pearls, now nearly 400 years old, filled a mysterious lead box that divers from Blue Water Ventures found while working on the site in June. The company works in a joint partnership with Mel Fisher’s Treasures to finish the treasure recovery from the Santa Margarita, which sank in the same 1622 hurricane that sent the legendary Nuestra Señora de Atocha to the bottom of the ocean.
The lead from the box had stained the pearls over the centuries, but John Corcoran, head conservator with Mel Fisher’s Treasures, worked methodically and patiently to restore the 16,184 pearls that were inside the box, along with silt and saltwater. “We had to remove the saltwater from the pearls first, but while keeping them wet,” Corcoran said this week after finishing the conservation and cataloging. The pearls were stored in the saltwater since their discovery to prevent the salt from crystallizing on the surface when it dried. Also, a shock of freshwater on the pearl would erode it nacre, or luster, Corcoran said.
Over a period of 14 weeks, Corcoran gradually reduced the water’s salt level by 10 percent every week until the pearls at last were in distilled water. “Then we soaked them in mineral oil for about an hour to restore their luster,” he said. The treasure team hired pearl experts to appraise the find for current market value. The appraisers offered individual evaluations for 251 of the largest and highest quality pearls. Some were irregular while others were perfectly round, which makes them more valuable.
A division committee from the treasure group will meet to assign a “shipwreck value” to each piece, which generally is 10 to 20 times market value due to uniqueness and antiquity, said Gary Randolph, vice president and operations director. “These pearls hadn’t been touched in almost 400 years,” said Sharon Wiley, public relations director for the company.
The entire cache of gems will be added to this year’s total treasure inventory, which is divided among the company’s investors every spring at a “division party.” “The investors will be happy this year,” Randolph said, estimating the shipwreck value of the pearls to exceed $3 million.
The largest of the stash is 52 carats, making it one of the biggest pearls in the world, and worth nearly $500,000, he said. Along with the box of pearls, divers on the Santa Margarita site also found several gold chains, bars and artifacts in the same area on the same day.
Marine archaeologist Duncan Mathewson, who works for Blue Water Ventures, in June said he believes a craftsman may have been planning to use the pearls for a belt, as divers found several gold belt buckles and fasteners near the lead box, which protected them from decay over the past 385 years. The organic gems normally would not have survived the centuries, Mathewson said.