Dear Paolo,

I was writing this in a quite rough way - of course I do not mean to
harm nature - but we should explore the maximum and take enough
samples to know at least what's living here now and get understanding
of it, and also for the pure pleasure of being able to admire what
exists etc...

Dear Andy,

what a wonderful email. I keep it, especially the questions we should
ask ourselves are important.

Dear Paul,

agree on most of your email. According to Bouchet there is a true
"rarity" factor in nature, but to prove a species is rare or not is
another matter.


Mabuhay from Mactan island, the Philippines.

Guido T. Poppe

Conchology, Inc.
Cebu Light Industrial Park,
Basak, Lapu-Lapu City,
Cebu, Philippines 6015

Phone #: +63 32 495 9990
Fax #: +63 32 495 9991

Websites: www.conchology.be
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                   www.mambele.be

Email: [log in to unmask]



On 09 May 2006, at 01:07, Monfils, Paul wrote:

> Going to the known location of the nest of the last great auk or giant
> condor and catching or killing the beast is one matter.  The
> collecting of
> specimens of a "rare" marine mollusk is not a comparable
> situation.  First,
> as time and experience have repeatedly shown, the designation
> "rare", as
> applied to marine mollusks cannot be taken to mean "rare in
> nature", but
> only "rare in collections". Such a designation most often means
> that we
> simply have not yet discovered the area where the main population
> resides.
> Cypraea fultoni, for example, was one of the greatest "rarities" for
> centuries, until a few years back, when a commercial fishing vessel
> trawled
> through their previously unknown habitat and brought up over a
> thousand of
> them. Tucker Abbott, in his book "Kingdom of the Seashell", stated
> (not an
> exact quote because I don't have the book in front of me)  ... "for
> any
> species living today there must be a breeding population of at
> least several
> thousand individuals".  Of course "several thousand individuals",
> if that
> constituted the entire population of the species, might still be
> grounds for
> labeling a species "rare". But more likely there are tens of
> thousands or
> hundreds of thousands of individuals unobtrusively living their
> daily lives
> somewhere in the 96% of ocean habitats we have not yet explored.
>
> So, I think that collecting a species of marine mollusc that is
> currently
> considered rare is not really an issue. "Go out and collect all you
> can
> find" might sound wanton. But in fact, if the species is truly
> rare, you
> probably won't find a single specimen except by an incredible
> stroke of
> luck; that's what "rare" means; and if you do manage to find one,
> collecting
> it is not going to significantly alter the population dynamics of the
> species.  On the other hand, if you find and collect a couple of dozen
> specimens, that simply demonstrates that the species is not
> actually rare.
>
> Note that my comments refer to marine species.  A fresh water
> species known
> from only one stream or a land snail restricted to one small island
> may very
> well be hunted to extinction, which doesn't mean that every last
> specimen is
> collected, but only that the population density is reduced to the
> point
> where the species can no longer reproduce itself effectively.  But
> it is
> probably impossible for human beings to bring any marine mollusc to
> the
> brink of extinction, except by wholesale destruction of habitat,
> and even
> then only for species which have limited geographic range.
>
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