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October 12, 2007

Onetime Maui dive shop now a global jewelry retailer

By BRIAN CHARLTON
Associated Press Writer

HONOLULU — It started as a simple dive shop in 1958, taking tourists and locals on scuba tours in the Pacific Ocean off Maui. But a year after opening for business, Maui Divers workers found what resembled a black bush in deep waters off the Molokai Channel.

If you go...
Maui Divers Jewelry: http://www.mauidivers.com or (808) 946-7979 or (800) 462-4454. Sixty locations around Hawaii. The Maui Divers’ Jewelry Design Center, 1520 Liona St., Honolulu, 10 minutes from Waikiki, is open daily, 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Free shuttle buses available to the design center.

Maui Divers began harvesting the black coral, gave up the scuba tours, and opened jewelry stores to sell the coral in rings, pendants and necklaces. The company is now the world's largest manufacturer of black coral jewelry and Hawaii's largest jewelry retailer. It has more than 60 stores and kiosks in nearly every tourist spot in the islands, from the Dole Plantation on Oahu to the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Visitor Center on the Big Island.


 
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