Auckland Autore Pearl Farm Half-Day Private Tour

Overall a great experience! Our guide Alex was incredibly helpful, bringing us to lunch and souvenir/ oleh-oleh places after the pearl farm tour. We really appreciate his hospitality and patience as he waited for us at these places before driving us around. At the Autore Pearl Farm, we had a guide named Key who did an amazing job bringing us through the entire process of culturing oysters to harvesting pearls and processing them. We had a full tour through the oyster nursery, the laboratory with phytoplanktons, and observed the manual process of surgically implanting a nucleus (a shell bead) and mantle tissue into a live oyster, which is critical in the pearl making process. He brought us back to the showroom to further explain the grading of pearls that are harvested from their farms. Truly an eye-opening pearly learning experience! Highly recommended.