REHOBOTH, Del. - Scott Overland and his family find a rare purple pearl in their appetizer at Salt Air restaurant.
The family was eating an order of the restaurant's clams when Scott tasted something hard.
"This was actually most of the way through the bowl of clams and felt just something hard as I ate one of them and at first I thought it was a shell or something like that and then when I looked at it it was purple so that was kind of unusual." said Scott Overland.
They claimed to have found the situation peculiar since they were eating clams, not oysters.
"-we had never heard of a clam producing pearls before and I had never seen, I don't think, a purple pearl either so we did a little bit of googling there at the table and learned that they do in fact exist and so it was a kind of fun, unexpected discovery during our meal."
President of Khalsa Jewelers, Paul Cheng, said that pearls are formed when a grain of sand enters a mollusk and is formed under pressure for a long period of time.
"Pearls these days are cultured you know the Japanese cultured pearls, they're probably one of the first to commercially, one of the first to do that - So depending on the chemicals, not the chemicals, the chemistry of the water the pearl could come out in different colors." said Paul Cheng.
The Overland's are still deciding on whether to keep the pearl or sell it, but plan to have it appraised regardless.