While the term "mother of pearl" is known to many, not many are aware of what it constitutes
or is derived from. 'Mother of pearl' in jewelry is the organic composite material nacre that
coats the inside layer of some mollusk shells, including abalone. It is the same material
that forms pearls. Abalone shell became popular with jewelers in the 1960s and 1970s as a
byproduct of new abalone farms that had been created to satiate the growing demand for the
shellfish in culinary circles around the world. Since its discovery, it has been over-harvested
and exploited for its meat and shell. The value of an abalone is determined by its age,
which is in turn determined by the number of growth rings in its shell.
Abalone are incredibly difficult and dangerous to harvest, traditionally requiring divers to
swim down to the ocean floor and pluck them off of the seabed. It should be noted that there
have been multiple successful commerical abalone farms established as a result of high demand
and overfishing, and this has helped wild populations begin to grow back somewhat, although
many species are still considered endangered by many world governments. The process of aging
them is also no small task, requiring the shell be cut through the cone, stained, and looked
at under a microscope to count the number of rings. As the price of abalone is determined
by its age, it would be very convienent if there was a reliable way to determine the age
of a specimen (or many) without having to go through this laborious task every time.
We aim to use several supervised machine learning algorithms to see if we can predict which
abalone are ideal for harvesting so that farmers can estimate how much they will be able to
make from a particular specimen, and so that scientists who want to do population studies on
species of abalone do not have to go through the tedium of breaking each specimen open, staining, and
looking at it under a microscope.