Thai pearl farmer still loves his job despite tsunami and Covid-19 setbacks

Ung and his wife Nuanpit in their shop in Ao Yon in the south of Phuket. Nuanpit has been designing and making exquisite gems from the pearls for customers from all over the world for several years. Photos: Carola Frentzen/dpa

While you may not see them on your approach, the livestock of the pearl farm lies in long, neat rows on the sandy bed of the shallow warm sea that surrounds Thailand's largest island Phuket.

These workhorses may do their work at a glacial pace, slowly forming pearls in colours that range from white and cream to silver and champagne, but the harvest easily makes up for that.

Plastic buoys bobbing on the water mark the location of the molluscs, the only other clue to their existence being a small boat in which all kinds of equipment, buckets, nets and ropes are piled up.