Earrings

We had never paid too much attention to earrings before, but the search for new products to make with giant clam shells was indeed far ranging. Nothing was considered too far out or off limits. For example, once we even saw giant clam shells used as the functional components of brassieres in a glossy advertisement for the Royal Lahaina Resort (thanks to Professor W. K. Fitt for sharing his research on this topic with us). After toying with the idea of getting into mass production of giant clam shell bras, we had second thoughts. Several of the female members of our new-product focus group agreed that the giant clam shell bras looked fabulous, but they would have been uncomfortable as hell, impossible to play volleyball in and downright dangerous in other situations. Simply put, giant clam shell bras were deemed incompatible with today's active lifestyle. Sadly, the idea was scrapped.

Earrings are a different matter. Earrings are everywhere, in large numbers. Children and adults of both sexes wear them. Suffice it to say that earrings are BIG business. Most ladies love them, really love them. We derived enormous satisfaction from seeing customers buy our hand-crafted giant clam shell earrings and then seeing fashionable looking tourists—lean, cosmopolitan and healthy—wearing our earrings around Koror. Calvin Klein and other designers must get this feeling, albeit on a much grander scale. But for a time, at least, we felt the same heady rush of accomplishment in the fashion world.

In the course of daily operations, actively producing giant clam hatcheries will accumulate vast quantities of small giant clam shells. Even well managed hatcheries and nurseries have a low but steady attrition of stock, especially during the first 12 months post-fertilization. Over a period of years, the MMDC hatchery amassed such prodigious numbers of T. derasa shells from 1 to 5 centimeters long that we couldn't help but ask, “what in the world are we going to do with those shells?”

Well, as the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.” We developed giant clam shell earrings out of sheer desperation. The small clam shells accumulating at MMDC were such an obvious resource waiting to be exploited that not using them would have been a shame. Two types of earrings evolved from our jewelry design team: post earrings and French wire earrings.