Thailand, (AFP) Much of Thailand’s pearl industry was washed away by the tsunamis that rose out of the Indian Ocean, and its biggest producer says it could be several months or longer before the diamonds of the sea regain their lustre.

Phuket Pearl Farm Co. chose its locations carefully more than a quarter century ago, opting for the relative shelter of islets in a bay on this tourist resort island’s quiet east coast.

"But we were not prepared for this," general manager Choocheep Kingkeaw tells AFP, referring to the swells that ploughed through the area on December 26.

Phuket itself largely protected the communities on its eastern flank from the killer waves that devastated the island’s fishing villages and several tourist resorts on Thailand’s southwest coast.

But the enormity of the earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and its subsequent tsunamis, meant few spots were unaffected around Phuket, which is the center of Thailand’s cultured pearl industry.

"The current was so fast, it swept them away," Choocheep said of his oysters, the mollusks in which pearls form.

"We lost a lot of oysters, thousands."

The vast majority of pearls on the multi-million dollar world market today are harvested from operations like those in Phuket.

Employees say the firm had about 200,000 oysters, which are strapped in to racks hanging two to three metres (yards) deep in cages in the water. The cages are usually just tethered to cement blocks on the sea bed.

"The ropes just snapped. It’s all gone," said a man who identified himself as "Hip", a manager of the company’s demonstration farm off a pristine beach on Rang Yai island, where a few thousand of the oysters are under cultivation.

The Rang Yai operation was mostly spared, but the much larger farm in the waters off more remote Nakha Yai island was devastated, he said.

Choocheep put preliminary losses at 20 million baht (510,000 dollars). "But they might be higher," he conceded, when long-term effects to business are factored in.

"It will take a few months to assess and then we will rebuild."

It takes two years or more to grow a cultured pearl. The precious baubles occur naturally when a foreign object — usually a grain of sand — wriggles inside a tightly closed oyster, which then produces a glossy protective coating around the intrusion.

With the cultured variety, experts manually insert a "nucleus", either made of plastic or oyster shell, around which the oyster forms its brilliant sphere.

Some of the more luxurious Southsea species of pearl cultivated here measure more than a centimetre in diameter. They take up to five years to grow, and are priced in the company showroom at 230,000 baht (5,900 dollars) for a pair. Necklaces of grey-black pearls cost five times as much.

Last year the company earned revenue of some 17 million baht, Choocheep says, but earnings for 2005 are expected to be far less, with fewer on-site buyers as tourism to Phuket falls off in the wake of the tragedy.

Thailand’s jewelry exports were estimated at 2.8 billion dollars for 2004, with pearls accounting for a mere fraction, according to the Jewelry Association of Thailand.