Melo melo pearls are amongst the rarest gems in the world.
They're created by the Indian Volute (also known as the zebra snail or Melo Melo): an extremely large marine gastropod from the Volutidae family, found in Southeastern Asian waters. These large melo snails inhabit shallow waters off the coasts of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. Natural melo melo pearls are produced when an irritant, such as a parasite, enters the mollusk. As a defense mechanism, the snail will coat the irritant with a calcium carbonate over time producing a porcelaneous, non-nacreous pearl.
