Perhaps, our local supplier in Okinawa may wish to send only clean shells. I have surveyed
C. annulus from most inhabited islands in the Ryukyus (not only Okinawa main island) over
two decades and many tens of thousands specimens are involved (sorry for this massacre but
they are just like weeds). White cloudy shells are not rare where people don't collect, that
may indicate abundance of older individuals. We have not established their life-expectancy
in the field but they can live for several years if someone or some predators did not bother.
It was a great surprise to me that you get shipments of thousands of annulus from Okinawa.
Because of high wage level here, it is hard to believe presence of any locals still collecting
such a low priced shells for making some income. It is harder to believe that American
soldiers stationed here wish to make some money to supplement their meager stipends
by such an activity of shell collecting, though their former ranks had decimated the local
stock of many species of shells. Our sea appears really barren in recent years, if you
remember the shell-rich Okinawan seas a few decades ago.   Masashi Yamaguchi

-----Original Message-----
From:   [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Wednesday, February 09, 2000 1:25 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Cowrie question

 Dear Paul,

 I am not familiar with mautitiana, but I have seen a (probably) similar
phenomena in annulus.
 As the shells get older, its shell surface became cloudy and whitish that
often made the orange
 ring invisible. This is based on our observation on individually marked
shells in the field.
 I suspect that the older shells excreted surface cover with irregular
crystal layers that
 might scatter light in random directions, so that the nacreous layer was
lost underneath.
 We may be able to verify this hypothesis by cutting shells to examine
microstructures, but
 It may require a SEM.
 Masashi Yamaguchi >>

Masashi,

This may be true, but the annulus is only on the dorsum, Paul's question had
to do with the base and lower margin. We have thousands of hand collected
hand cleaned annulus from Okinawa and it did not seem to be a very common
occurrence. The clouding that Paul asks about seems to happen quite often.

Frank (getting tired) in Massachusetts