Aquamarine from Manakana, Madagascar

ABSTRACT

Madagascar is well known as a source of aquamarine and other pegmatite-related gem materials (e.g. Pezzotta 2001), but in recent years most gem exploration and mining activities there have been curtailed by circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic and government regulations. Nevertheless, according to Dr Federico Pezzotta (pers. comm. 2022), in early 2021 there was a new find of aquamarine (Figures 1 and 2) that entered the market in the capital city of Antananarivo. The material was represented as coming from an area called Manakana, which is the name historically used for the region encompassing the pegmatitic districts on the west side of Lake Alaotra in central Madagascar. In this case, the specific aquamarine locality is Andilana, which is situated near the north-western shore of Lake Alaotra. Hundreds of kilograms of good-quality aquamarine were mined from near-surface deposits by thousands of miners from all over Madagascar who rushed there despite COVID-19 restrictions. In early May, the Malagasy government sent the military to gain control over the situation, and subsequently the export of aquamarine from Madagascar was made illegal. © 2022, Journal of Gemmology. All Rights Reserved.