Shell collectors don´t - normally - do a lot of damage anywhere - if they
collect dead shells on the beach.

However, if there is a fashion (or a clique - cone collectors, for
example, who want every last example of every species from everywhere)
then there are problems.

Conus pergrandis is a large, but hideously ugly shell, usually (very
naturally) broken and scarred long before maturity, so very, very seldom
collected in anything like gem condition. Nobody really wanted them, but
the odd nut who wanted the whole list would have had to pay $500 for a
reasonable specimen.

They only grow on muddy/sandy substrates in certain places (which is why
they are hideously ugly).

Most dealers in Punta Engano (Cebu Philipines) used to have a few in their
back drawers for the real cone nuts.

Then, my old friend Carlo, who was actually trying to find some new
Latiaxis, went, with his trawl-net, down to that bit off Dapitan,
Mindanao, where there is a small island in the middle of a big, wide,
sandy sea-plain, and hauled up new no Latiaxis at all, but a whole bunch
of hideously ugly Conus pergrandis, from which he made enough to retire to
his newly-built house with his newly-married young wife. (I was godfather
to his 4th kid just last month).

Within the year, around 150 shell-boats were down there.

They trawled up so many Conus pergrandis that the price went from $500 to
$5 within six months (if you pay any more, you´re dumb) - but, on that
big, wide, muddy/sandy sea plain they trawled up a whole lot more - some
of those small cones (kimioi, chiangi, etc) and a whole lot of brand-new
Turridae that no-one had ever seen before

(Psst! I have one, about 4mm long, absolutely unique - for $500 only! For
$600 I will even get it named after you!).

That big, wide, muddy/sandy sea plain has now been scraped clean. (A boat
with 6ft wide trawls can do 25km a day, easy, so that´s 5km2 - I can´t
work the arithmetic, but if you can, work out how much seabed 150 boats
can scour clean in a year (with a 4 month break for typhoons)

That´s what the shell collector/buyer business is doing here.


regards

Richard

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