>Yup. when the opportunity to get "good" (complete) data is there  it is a
>shame to pass it up.  Hardly ever see date-collected beyond month-year and
>sometimes not even that.

More often no date at all. A date gives a specimen some history. My
oldest specimens were collected in BC (marine) and the eastern US
(land/fluvial) in the 1800s.

>I used to worry a lot about PI or Taiwan (or?) data but not too much any
>longer.

Simon tells me PI data is more trustworthy these days. I guess there
are so many collecting there that they can't possibly keep secrets
from each other now!

>I do get a laugh when something obviously from the intertidal reef
>is said to be "deep-water" or "tangle-net" or "100 meters" . . . gotta use a
>little common sense.

 From dealers, sure... BUT I have to say that DEAD shells can be way
out of their living depthranges eg my beach Provocator, or the 3
Potamopyrgus I personally dredged from 600m! And don't forget the
NMNZ LIVING Siphonaria from a holdfast at 1000m, living with a climax
deepwater holdfast fauna. There are surprises out there.

>Giving out data for the local trawl-caught shells leaves something to be
>desired (as you are aware) -- sometimes a single trawl covers quite a few
>miles

40-50km easily, and I hate doing the data for these---each run has a
start & finish position. And the data provided by the fishermen may
cover several parallel runs, with specimens from all runs mixed up.
So you have an approximate rectangle to define if you wish to be
accurate...

>  -- but fortunately it is almost always a constant depth and normally
>the same bottom type.  Kinda funny -- there were a couple boats that did not
>want me to use boat names.  Told the owner/operator that no one but
>collectors/museums would see the data (and that I liked to give credit where
>it was due) and they softened up some.

Some operators might not want the boat's owners to know they're
making money on the side... but most probably don't mind or even care.

One thing to watch for is obvious falsification. Most unfortunately
there is a fellow at Auckland University who is busily screwing the
entire collections of fossil material there and at the Auckland
Museum... a paleontologist has discovered that this guy is cataloging
grossly mislocalized material; he also carries Recent materials on
collecting trips and drops them on the beach, then cries out, picks
them up and claims to have found range extensions! The fellow is
doing volunteer "work" at the museum and is doing a PhD on
Triassic/Jurassic fossils, and when he visits our geological Survey
or my Geology Dept he is not allowed out of sight or into the
collections on his own! Unfortunately the Auckland paleontologists
believe he's a great fellow and refuse to believe that he's doing
what he is... toey will eventually find out to their sorrow that
their collections have become curios because falsified data reduces
any specimen cataloged by this fellow to useless status. Plus who
knows how many specimen numbers he may have altered on specimens
cataloged before he came along?

>I don't put REALLY complete data on my labels -- I put that on the index
>cards.

I put it on labels (except the very small labels in 6x50mm tubes,
where I only get MOST of it on) as well as the catalog. Also in my
"collecting diary", a hardcover exercisebook where I list each
collection (thereby making faunal lists for big dredge hauls of
perhaps hundreds of species), where I also list specimens received in
exchange or purchase.

The more redundancy, the better, I zink.