> Bruce,
 
Welcome aboard.  Your envy for the "scientific types" is more than equally
matched by many of us who envy you your great diving experiences.  And frankly,
I for one am amazed at anyone sticking to just one family - especially a
diver!!  Even when I really tried to limit myself to one or two or ten...
families I would find some great looking shell not in those families or read an
article on the habits of...and I'm off, or over board or whatever.  I started
with the intention of concentrating on a few families but trying for a
representative sample of each family.  Well, now I guess it depends upon how you
define representative!  I had a healthy collection of nerites but by no means
extensive, until I met (electronically) Jr. Powers and now I'm up to 65
different species and always looking for more.  The same happen with xenophora.
I had about five specimens, talked to Harry Berryman, read some of his stuff and
now I'm looking for the oddball and seldom offered species to finish off my list
of xenophora.  I can go on with epitonium (Bruce Neville), cones, pecten, etc.
All of this because of Conch-L (thanks COA for your sponsorship).  Its a great
community and we used to have flying pigs show up occasionally but I heard they
all died.  Oh, my original families were strombus, aporrhais, and murex.  I did
about 98% on the strombus and the aporrhais but the murex tend to lag behind.
 
So here's hoping you get inundated with cypraea nuts who want to trade (also
sometime I first tried because of Conch-L).  Again welcome,
 
Tom in New Mexico, USA