Sea pearl oysters (Pinctada maxima ) are one of the commodities that already become an icon in West Nusa Tenggara Province-Indonesia . Pearls are the only gems produced by living creatures. According to ITC Trademap 2022, Indonesia is the 4th largest pearl exporter in the world after Hong Kong, Japan, and China, with sales value reaching USD 55 million. However, Indonesia has only been able to fulfill around 5-8 percent of the global market. In several studies, pearl oyster aquaculture has several environmental benefits, such as nutrient cycling, remediation from pollutant effects in waters, and mitigation of eutrophication and hypoxia.
Marine Aquaculture Development Center (MADC) Lombok has succeeded in cultivating pearl oysters since 2003, starting with the production of P. maxima larvae, broodstock, and farming using the longline method for pearl production. Existing conditions at MADC Lombok including h atchery production with capacity reaches 5 million larvae and 160,000 spats, broodstock candidates and broodstock of as many as 1,067 (10–15 cm) oysters , 1, 251 oysters that have been operated to produce pearls , and grow-out production using longline methode that the capacity reaches 11,200 (6–9 cm) oysters with a 2.5% survival rate of spat size.
The survival and growth of pearl oysters are influenced by various factors, including stocking density, diet, environmental conditions, and predation (Pit J. and Southgate P., 2003). Therefore, scaling up the pearl oyster (Pinctada maxima ) production at MADC Lombok is a solution to increase the production in terms of quantity as a form of an integrated manner from upstream to downstream . The scaling up process needs to be strengthened by technology-based security systems to ensure minimum theft activity that causes major lost in pearl oyster aquaculture. Layout of the scale-up for pearl oyster production can be seen at figure 1.