Dear Don,

I am working on sandy beaches, not reefs, for the past several years and am not sure about
the present status of Conus geographus population in Okinawa. I shifted my target of study from
reef gastropods to seagrass-bed bivalves and finally intertidal sandy beach clams. The last category
is the least studied and very much neglected, though the clams are living in the closest environment
of the sea to us humans, and are much threatened by coastal degradations (for clams, but for the
general public called as development).

Anyway, the confirmed number of human fatalities due to C. geographus has been six in Okinawa
and a few more to the northern Ryukyus. The population density is high here in the Ryukyus so
that it is hard to compare this figure with other localities. From my personal experience of shell
collecting for research (I am not a shell collector in the sense to enjoy collection as a hobby, so
that I go out for collecting just what are needed for the specific purposes; no gleaning around),
it was possible to find up to several live C. geographus for one night in shallow reef flats and edges.
Conus textile was much more common. One of my students tried to study foraging activities of
these cone shells night after night but he never finished his thesis and his data set is missing.
I have found Conus striatus fairly common at certain specific reef flat microhabitat (it is a secret).

There was a diver-fisher who supplied Conus geographus for research institutions in the mainland
Japan. I do not know him personally and no detailed information available: how many did he
collect for this and how often.

Masashi Yamaguchi
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Faculty of Science,
Univ. of the Ryukyus