Good Day All~
if anyone has been to the fiji area in the last year could you please contact me . I would like to know if the shelling is
better at some times more then others . also plane fares Etc. thank you . Peta Bethke
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Foster <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, December 27, 1999 2:15 PM
Subject: Re: South Pacific Destinations?
At 06:26 PM 12/26/99 -0500, you wrote:
>I’m planning a trip to the South Pacific. I’ve never been. Done all my
>shelling and diving in the caribbean & Florida. I can’t afford to do this
>very often, so I want to make this a great trip. Does anyone have any
>suggestions? Palau? Fiji?
>
>In addition to shelling (mostly dead shelling), I’d like to do some diving
>and beachcombing. I’d like a place that’s affordable and low key, where you
>can wander the beach. Ideally, it would be a place without too much risk of
>tropical disease and where the locals didn’t dislike Americans.
>
>I have two weeks of vacation in July.
>From a posting to this list by Don Barclay back in June, 1997:
"As far as shelling
in Tonga, just let me say that I can collect 50 times as much stuff in
the same amount of time as I can in Samoa. I only snorkelled for 2
hours this last trip, but I brought back 25 lbs of shells. That was in
an area that is snorkelled all the time. The best collecting is on the
outer islands, and it's not much trouble to arrange transportation.
Lynn
at the Bounty Bar in Neiafu can arrange transportation for you if you
give her a days notice, or sometimes less. It cost us $20 per person
to have the guy take us where we wanted to go, and stay there 'til
we were ready to come back.
There are six small islands southeast of Vava'u, four of them
uninhabited. You can find some really neat stuff there, as the
topography of the Vava'u group forces the deep water molluscs to
live on the shallow sand flats. This is where I spend a lot of time
when I'm down there. I did have a deadly (for him) encounter
with a sea snake there. All the books say they are harmless and not
aggressive, but apparently this one couldn't read.
The "cowrie reef" is on the other side of the mountain from the down-
town area, but you will have to get there by boat also. The lady that
runs the sea jewelry place beside the Royal Tonga Airlines office in
Neiafu can give you directions. Her husband recently passed away,
and he was the local cowrie collecting expert.
In a couple of hours I collected about 15 live cowries, 20 cones, and
a lot of other species, including a couple nice miters (sanguisugum
and neocancilla papilio), phallium, pectinidae,cymatium, etc. There
were also a lot of nice oliva, and thousands of terebellum terebellum.
You get very selective quickly with the lambis lambis', and there are
lots of fantastic examples. The same goes for the conus marmoreus
and virgo, but you have to look a little more carefully for them. There
are quite a few murex ramosus, but they are so big it's a lot of trouble
to transport them. You may also find unusual stuff like dentalia
shells in this area.
There are many different strombs found in Vava'u, dentatus, fragilis,
rugosus, etc., but I have also found strobus sinuatus there as well
as a nice strombus thersites on the beach. You don't find them all
in one spot, however, so you have to move around a bit to locate
the different populations.
The water around Tonga, at least the northern (Vava'u) group, must
be extremely rich in nutrients, judging by the size and variety of
marine life there. Tiger cowries almost in the class with schilderiana
are common. Samoa is nutrient-deficient by comparison, with a
much smaller population of most species, both in size and number.
The much warmer weather in Samoa probably accounts for most
of this, even though it is only 300 miles north.
If you go to Tonga between now and October, take a wet suit. It
was already frigid in April, and is downright cold in July and August.
I think I wore a couple of mm off my teeth last year trying to snorkel
without any thermal protection."
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