Dittos to all on this wonderful daily fun reading everyone's travel
adventures with shells on top...sitting in cold colorado it is such a
treat...It makes me think shell vacations and that makes me ask for ideas on
Fiji spots or Vanuatu spots.. I have been to Fiji, not Vanuatu and would
love to hear suggestions, differences, where great snorkelling spots are and
if you were going to collect shells just where you would go...????
keep up those remote postings
clair beckmann
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>From: "Jass, Joan" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Conchologists List <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Remote places
>Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 15:48:27 -0600
>
>I'm reminded of the marvelously phrased title which summed up one way of
>appreciating that 'remote places' feeling, the article "Shells Take You
>Over
>World Horizons" by Rutherford Platt in the July 1949 National Geographic.
>
>Next to travel in the imagination, of course one of the least expensive
>ways
>of feeling connected to remote places is beachcombing, where there is
>always
>the possibility of encountering shells and other marine life washed in from
>distant and inaccessible locales.  One of my favorite such experiences took
>place twenty years ago on a visit to Akumal Bay on the eastern coast of
>Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.  After a storm out at sea, the beach there
>became inundated with heaps of fresh golden sargassum weed still containing
>live individuals of many of pelagic weed's beautifully camouflaged animal
>inhabitants, including the sargassum nudibranch Scyllaea pelagica.
>
>Thanks to all who've shared similarly wonderful memories via this thread!
>
>Joan Jass, Invertebrate Zoology, Milwaukee Public Museum, Email
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>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Conchologists List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
>Guido Poppe
>Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 10:35 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Remote places
>
>
>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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