> Dear Simon,


I entirely agree with you, and I would love to see live thersites and
photograph them in the future - but I doubt at my age I'm  going in
cold water again - and I do not like sharks - seems there are plenty
in your area.

My figure of 5 % is on the nose: I have been in Australia and didn't
see a lot of collecting there. What I saw were immense coasts with
little shells available, but this is twenty years ago.  And we see
little of the Australian shells
outside, except the Zoila and a few classics occasionally.  Most of
the vast fauna is only seldom offered.   Recently I was shown photos
from the south: I don't think many people are going to swim for long
times on more than a few kilometers in these waters. Or I may be
wrong, please inform me and the list. 50 divers on such a coast, even
full time, is nothing. We should even then see quantities of the
endemic volutes, trochids, tellins etc... but this is not the case.

Also in the Philippines collecting is scarce, despite the fact
hundreds of professionals are busy with it. The tangle nets cover
almost nothing of the vast territory, even not 1/100000 part of the
bottoms of the Philippines. Again a first glance figure, but if you
want I'll calculate accurately.

To conserve the nice shallow water populations from devastation by
divers - I guess even the non collecting divers will take a
thersites  - just as tigers are collected by about everybody in the
Philippines - the only thing to do is make small "sanctuaries".
They don't need to be big - a few hundred meters are enough - but
they need to be controlled. In the Philippines we have several
hundred of these and they serve also as a breeding ground for other
marine life.   Excellent if one wants to see super aquarium and
photograph fish and big shells.    These sanctuaries have only one
defect: the nudibranches and smaller stuff are all eaten by the
multitudes of fish. For these one has to be outside the sanctuaries.

Best regards,
Guido, dark morning in Belgium, dreaming from Great Australian Bight.

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