Hello Tink,

Welcome to Conch-L, the best place in the conchiverse to interact with
others who share your special interest. I'm also from the cold northeast
(RI), where the shells tend to be rather dull and colorless. But there are
some exceptions. Littorina obtusata (smooth periwinkle) and Nucella lapillus
(dogwinkle) both come in a considerable range of colors. You may
occasionally find wentletraps on Long Island, which are always an
interesting find. In time you may discover that some of the most interesting
shells are not the most obvious ones that you see as you walk along the
beach, but the smaller ones that can be found in the "beach drift" that
accumulates at the high tide line. This material can be taken home, dried,
and picked through at your leisure, and many tiny treasures can be found
this way.

As for the taking of live mollusks, I think that taking a few because you
want to preserve and admire their shells is at least as ethical as taking
them by the ton because people want to eat them and throw away their shells.
A plate of calamari or a bowl of clam chowder represents a lot more deceased
molluscs than a day's collecting at the beach. The number of mollusks taken
by collectors is miniscule compared to the number taken by commercial
fishing operations. I'm not suggesting that the small numbers alone make
collecting ethical. On the contrary, I think that commercial fishing for
molluscs, when done responsibly, is completely ethical, and so is
responsible personal collecting. As for the "ick factor", that's something
you have to put up with if you are going to fish or hunt or collect live
molluscs or have pets or take care of small children. You just have to
decide whether the rewards outweigh the ick. :-)

Latin names are a necessity for a number of reasons. Most of the better
books on shells, at least the more advanced ones, use only Latin names. If
you correspond with collectors in other parts of the world (which is very
easy to do via the internet), local vernacular names may often be
misleading, or outright meaningless. Probably all collectors worldwide would
agree on what a "cowrie" is, or a "cone shell", or a "scallop". But other
names, like "whelk", "winkle", "drill", "horn shell", "cap shell", "triton",
"turret shell", "mussel", "cockle", etc. may have very different meanings in
different countries. The "queen conch", "horse conch", and "crown conch" are
all found in Florida - but only one of them is actually a conch. The
channeled whelk and northern whelk are both found in Long Island, but the
channeled whelk is not a whelk. It is in the same family as the crown conch,
a family that does not include either true whelks or true conchs. You get
the idea. "Strombus" has the same meaning in every country on earth,
regardless of the local language spoken there.

There are many good internet sources, but none that will supply names,
pictures, or information on every shell you might want to find, so it takes
some "shopping around". Some sites allow you to post pictures of
unidentified shells, so others can identify them for you. Some offer shell
auctions. Four excellent starting sites are:

http://coa.acnatsci.org/conchnet/

http://www.molluscs.net/index2.htm

http://www.manandmollusc.net

http://www.seashell-collector.com/

The first-listed site has information on shell clubs, including the Long
Island Shell Club. All of these sites include many links to additional
sites, so using these as a starting point, you can find your way to hundreds
of others.

Regards,
Paul M.