Australian South Sea pearls are cultured in close step with the natural environment. The industry works under the Pearling Code of Practice, which is written to keep disruption to the lagoon and reef to a minimum.

Thanks to a strict quota system and a coastline that is remote and largely unpolluted, Australia still holds the world's last significant beds of wild South Sea pearl oysters, Pinctada maxima.

Those conservation rules have paid off: Australia's wild oyster beds are in better shape than they have been in over a century. Natural pearls of high quality still turn up, and that is down to careful management of the wild stock and respect for the water it lives in, something Australian pearling has treated as a working requirement, not an afterthought.

After a two-year assessment by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the Australian pearling industry was independently certified to the MSC standard for environmental and sustainability management.

The MSC is the leading non-profit body for sustainable, environmentally responsible use of wild marine resources. That certification was a world first for the pearling industry.

Australia's pearl farms run from the Cobourg Peninsula north-east of Darwin down to Dampier in Western Australia. The sites were chosen for clean, unpolluted water, which is exactly what Pinctada maxima needs to lay down thick, high-luster nacre. Many of the farms sit in or beside national parks, marine parks and Aboriginal lands.

The industry's standards exceed the Ecologically Sustainable Development requirements set out in Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999).