ABOUT US

A WORD FROM “PUKA JOHN”

Mabuhay (Welcome)!

After years of successful shop, private and e-commerce sales, we are pleased to introduce our Bohol Seas Design website.

Living in Hawaii in the 1980’s as a young resort manager with an education in environmental engineering, I was gifted a puka necklace by a local that I had helped in building a native house. Though I had seen them before, this necklace contained perfectly matched 100% natural shells that he related had taken over a year to collect. I asked…and was accepted… to undertake an apprenticeship (free labor) with his brother, a local shellcrafter of some renown. It began as a hobby…40 years ago.

Thanks to an early retirement some years ago, I moved from my home to The Philippines, where my wife’s family is from and I that had visited many times as an ardent ocean swimmer, surfer, and diver. We settled on a small island where virtually all activity revolves around the sea. Out of habit, I began to walk the beaches with my wife and children. We collected from the beach, cleaned trash and debris from both sea and sands, and In no time, local children and even adults were participating in our efforts.

We soon discovered that a few select beaches were an excellent source of genuine puka shells. Retirement was pretty much moot anyway, as we had already built and still operate a commercial piggery, two farms and a mussel hatchery…at my insistence and design all net carbon-negative and eco-friendly facilities.

Today, we have a workshop and retail store in Valencia, Bohol with over 900 jewelry pieces on hand and an active on-line presence across multiple social, craft and retail platforms. We create new designs each week. We offer theses in “collections” at wide-ranging price points. Many of our fisherfolk neighbors and other seafarers wear our jewelry as traditional talismans. Our better pieces are worn by professional surfers, swimmers, and boatmen all over the world. Our best pieces appear in museums, cultural centers and private collections.

We are, and will always be, a facility that promotes environmental responsibility, fairness to all, and compassion for our community.

And that necklace, gifted to me and started it all 40 years ago? I wear it to this very day.