and a small industry reliant on natural spat collection became established. Unlike round pearl production, mabé production can be achieved by local people with minimal training and it supports an asso- ciated handicraft industry that provides significant livelihood benefits. The Tongan pearl industry has considerable potential for development. Japanese specialists visiting Vava'u in the mid-1990s, for example, estimated that an area of approximately 850 ha could be farmed forproducts, such as dried and concentrated micro-algae, have been devel- oped specifically for bivalves. However, while some prior studies have assessed the potential of such products for pearl oyster larvae (e.g. Southgate et al., 1998; Teitelbaum and Fale, 2008), successful hatchery production of pearl oysters has not previously been reported without the use of live micro-algae. A range of phototrophically grown, highly- concentrated marine micro-algae are now available commercially and have potential in many aspects of bivalve production including hatchery culture (Reed and Henry, 2014). This paper reports on successful hatch- ery production of P. penguin in Tonga using commercially available micro-algae concentrates as the sole food source.