About the marine shells:

Well, it is well known that quantities of about 100 large species got
out of the country since 300 years. They are merely the ones eaten here.
Cuming then collected but the locality labels are doubtful, probably
not because he didn't care, he did, but because most probably nobody
told him where they found the shells. No fishermen will give away his
locality data. It is a challenge to know where a shell comes from,
before and today.

Later a small point on the map between Malaysia and the Philippines
was visited by the Siboga and Semper published several hundred new
species from deep water from Indonesia and that area. Most live also
here in the Philippines.
Then the Challenger came along and the USA with the Albatros. There
was extensive professional collecting by the Albatros people, but
little of the material has been studied and published. Gould
described a number of species and Bartsch also.

In the eighties the French Museum people became active here: there
was deep water dredging by Musorstom1, 2 and 3. From the material
I've seen, mainly Mindoro. Last year they did the Dabfar cruise in
the Bohol Sea and explored extensively down to about 2000 m.
And then there was the Panglao Marine Biodiversity project 2004. The
latter was concentrated on shallow water species and I think it
brought in about 6000 species in 6 weeks by about 40 scientists. See
http://www.panglao-hotspot.org/
So long for the professional approaches that I'm aware of. If people
know about other expeditions working here, I'm eager to learn.

The shell dealers and their army of fishermen: since 1970 the tangle
net has been invented and later the lumun lumun net. Tangle nets are
not harmful for the bottom: they are merely a method of extraction
than fishing. Few areas have been explored: a few square kilometers
in the Camotes, near Mactan Island, around Panglao (which includes
Balicasag), Talikud and Balut Island. Virtually no nets go deeper
than 250 m. Most are around 80 m deep. These nets collected in
general 1 shell a day/net. With between 100 and 350 nets, this means
about this number of shells a day. The nets are on the same places
since 20 years and it is difficult to motivate the fishermen to move:
they want to stay close to their family and because shells come up at
the same rate as 20 years ago, they see no reason to move.
A second source are fish divers: they will pick up shells but their
activity is limited to slopes in the Camotes Sea only. They seldom go
deeper than 25 m, unless somebody wants a leucodon or a valentia.
Then they risk their lives and many never come up again. Same for
expensive aquarium fish which is a bigger trade than our dwarfed out
shells.

This may be to long for server, I continue in next email

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
                   www.poppe-images.com
                   www.mambele.be

Email: [log in to unmask]

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