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Like pearls that cannot be sprayed too much with perfume or warmed too much with smoke, left alone too much or touched too much, the mother oysters and mussels must be treated gently—as the Scottish pearl-fishers, too, had learned to their regret. These creatures are a barometer of how we are treating our planet. Sometimes in our greed to make them produce pretty things for our pleasure we forget that they deserve our respect.
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