Well said Lynn and I agree with you.    Mark you are way OFF base.  I
don't know of ANYONE in our shell club who over collects or takes
juveniles or disturbs eggs.
 
We do collect live.   We are very discreet and rarely take more than one
or two of each species...so we actually have set our own limit.
Trying to set a limit by law, to me, is an impossibility.  How are you
going to train all the law-enforcement people in all the species that
are available?  They are going to run around with the Compendium of
Shells in one hand and pull all the shells out of a bucket and id them
all?  Right?   Also who is going to pay for all the extra law
enforcement we will need to enforce all this?  What a joke!!!
 
Yes the shells definitely are moving.  We have collected  3-4 times a
year in the Bahamas for the last 20 years.   Every time we go the
beaches and areas have changed naturally.
Storms change the looks of the beaches....the shells move to different
areas....we continue to find new and different shells.
 
Never collected a pica in Florida.  Assumed they were strickly Bahamian
and Cuban area.   If they have disappeared from Florida...didn't know
they were ever here!!!
These are a great food source in the Bahamas and YET they are everywhere
we go.
 
Please do not ever blame the private/scientific shell collector for
depeleting the shell population.     We with our little film cans and
small plastic bags (not buckets)........
 
Last year in the Bahamas we could have collected literally hundreds of
helmet shells.
We came home with 3......
 
We also collected hundreds of Tellina radiata laying dead like
butterflys all over the sand.
We didn't kill those!!!!!
 
The shells are still there.....believe me.     We are sick of divers
telling us how bad we are for taking live shells as they bring in a huge
sack of lobster....
 
Last night at our club meeting...we were shown how many egg capsules a
cowrie lays along with the thousands of veligers inside each one of
these capsules.......they reproduce
millions.
 
I agree when their environment is disturbed....they move to other
areas.  How much of this beach "renourishment" is helping?     Pumping
all the sand from deep water and bringing it in the cover up the
beach?   How much shell life is that disturbing?     AND within a year
or two all the sand is back where in came from in the first place.  WHY
can't we leave nature alone?
 
 
 
 
 
 
--
Jim and Bobbi Cordy
of Merritt Island, Florida.
Specalizing in Self-Collected
Caribbean & Florida Shells