Hi Joni,

Shelling on the back side of Eleuthera, the West side, was excellent. But in
more exposed places at the North, south and West, weren't so good. The turtle
grass beds were pretty bare. But oh, in amongst the weed on the West side,
such goodies!

I've been looking for Xenophora forever and save for one beachworn specimen
on St. John, I've found zip. That includes one trip to Freeport, two to Long
Island, one to Cat Island, one to Harbour Island and three to Exuma. I had
many wonder hours searching and found other things along the way, but until
this trip, nada Xenophora.

Last week I got twenty (TWENTY!), about five a day; six live, two beached,
the other dozen with crabs.

I got a bouquet of tulips, which are supposedly common, but my previous
specimens were pretty ratty.

There were lots of murex; lace & apple. Tarpum Bay was my favorite hunting
ground, right out in front of our apartments. The bottom had a barely
perceptible slope, bands of hardbottom alternated with sand. Possibly the
fossil remains of tongue and groove reef? In any event, each strip of hard
bottom was dominated by different types of weed. Close to shore the weed was
red and crunchy and that was where the murex were, lace and apple. The lace
ones in different colors, some black, some cream and some a stunning orange.
You had to go slow to spot them. But snorkeling in clear, clean, bathtub warm
water is one of the most pleasant activities I can imagine, so why hurry?
There were latirus, chestnut I think, but you'll have to ask one of the more
experienced folks who went to be sure.

Further out in the green fuzzy finger algae was where I found the carriers.
There were sand potholes and that's where I spotted them and netted olives,
olives everywhere, more than at a New York Cocktail party. The tulips were in
every bed, as long as they had some weedy cover, they didn't care what kind
of weed.

What else? Things I didn't collect because I already had some from previous
trips; tellins (a few sunrise, but more speckled) the most adorable little
egg cockles no bigger than your fingernail and in such vivid colors. Date
mussels, scallops, disk clams, various oysters, I don't know bivalves. Um,
rough file clams and yellow leafy jewel boxes, but I had no knife to pry them
off of the rocks. Those West Indian top snails that the Bahamians make into
chowder, big and round and checkered like chef's pants. Giddy little
marginellas zooming around on the sand. Cute, cute, cute!

On a misguided attempt to find Millars beach my group stumbled across a rocky
shore so studded with urchins that access to deeper water was well nigh
impossible. So of course we had lots of urchin tests on the beach; heart
urchins and sea eggs. We found gaudy asaphis amid the mangrove roots. We got
back in the car and on the way back found a sheltered beach with tiny but
very elaborate lace murex, chitons galore and red miniature sea stars not a
half inch across.

One day we swam off the rocks at the end of the Hatchet Bay runway and there
were hundreds of milk conchs.

At James Cistern we found plenty of smallish chanks.

We visited a gack-filled semi-stagnant pond that defied belief. Underwater it
looked like a 50's pulp sci-fi illustration, all creeping chicken liver
sponges and clouds of fuzzy algae in unearthly hues. The inhabitants of this
creepy place were white and clear bubble snails, runty maroon tulips and some
species or subspecies of minuscule black murex found only in this particular
pond. I'm over forty and my eyes aren't what they used to be, so couldn't
really focus on them.

What else? The usual Bahamian critters; snappers groupers, cudas, French and
queen angels, spotted, banded and spotfin butterflyfish, ocean trigger fish,
sea turtles, southern stingrays, yellow stingrays and an eagle ray.

And oh, on the last snork of the last day I only found one shell. A black
lace murex 69 mm high, 48 mm across with spines like a stegosaurus. Very
clean, it had only one little piece of mermaid's wineglass as a kind of
underwater parasol. Enough to make a murex believer out of me. But not enough
to overshadow those Xenophora.

Ellen