Hi, Everyone!
Speaking of remote places, maybe my former home in southern
Newfoundland, Canada, can be considered as remote. As far
as I know, for most of my forty years of collecting in this
province, I was the only serious collector in the entire
area.
I have several special memories. The first is collecting my
first shell, a specimen of Stagincola elodes, on April 29,
1964. (I kept good data from the beginning!) Intrigued by
Tucker Abbott's first edition of American Seashells, I
decided to become a shell collector.
Another is making my first dredge, following some
instructions found in the AMU pamphlet "How to Study and
Collect Shells". This was a rather large, triangular
affair, and was quite difficult to haul up by hand, but I
dredged a lot of species never found on the rather
parsimonious Newfoundland beaches. I recall inviting
several fellow collectors, whom I had corresponded with, to
visit me at my home in Grand Bank for field trips and
dredging. Some, I remember, were from Nova Scotia,
Manitoba, and New York. It was wonderful to have kindred
spirits with me to talk about shells and help them collect
something different for their collections.
My third memory is of a summer field trip to an island in
the middle of a large bay on the southern coast of
Newfoundland. I went there for a week with two French
researchers, a botanist and a mammalogist. This island is a
wildlife sanctuary and we needed a special permit to go
there. I especially remember one evening, near sunset, when
I was doing some low-tide beach collecting. A small herd of
bison (buffalo) had been placed on the island several years
previously as an environmental experiment. Only two, a male
and female, had survived and they decided to stroll along
the coast that evening. I heard them coming and snuggled in
close to the low bank near the beach. They walked by, just
above me, and to say that I was as quiet as a mouse would be
an understatement.
So, I guess, remoteness can be relative. My own home town
could be considered remote by most people!
All the best from Korea!
Ron Noseworthy
> Indeed nice the read all these adventures.
>
> One of the great things in shell collecting IS to go to
> remote places. REMOTE is also in our head. I remember
> great days as a young man in the Belgian Ardennes -
> nothing "remote" but if you walk 10 kilometers i a forest,
> plant your small tent near a lake and stay there for two
> days, one does feel as very remote from everywhere. And
> the Clausilia rolphi I found gave me about the same
> emotions diving later Conus granulatus in the Tobago Keys.
>
> Another funny thing is that remote places from yesterday
> are the busy ones of today.
>
> An example: in 1982 I was on Boavista, Cape Verde Islands.
> This was an adventure at that time, I was the only
> not-African there for two weeks, could hardly find any
> food except lobsters and the fish I shot. Water was the
> major problem. Even being young and slender, I lost 8
> kilograms over a 25 day period in the Archipelago. (The
> Dutch man visiting this Island broke his leg there and got
> infected - he died in days).
>
> All the malacological explorers visiting these Islands in
> the late seventies and beginning eighties got memorable
> times.
>
> But two years ago I went back to Boavista: guess what. I
> stayed there in a 4 star hotel and rented a car !
> (there were only 6 cars on the Island in 1982).
>
> It was great to visit my old diving buddies still living
> there today - they didn't forget me, so seldom they got a
> visit from Europe in 1982. We went diving again together
> in Gatas Bay. It took us one hour to get there, instead of
> a whole day in 1982.
>
> Guido
>
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