V. cabritii - Yes, 90 degree. This is a natural behavior.
We dove at night after all boat traffic had halted. Way back then Utila was a sleepy fishing village. ... fishing out of small boats only, mostly dories with single cylinder diesel engines. The island on occasion received a supply boat or ferry. Dive tourism had not yet begun. Back then the island had 2 vehicles and a couple scooters.
Utila, unlike it's sea-mount ridge island neighbors Roatan and Guanaja, is a volcanic island atoll on the edge of the continental shelf, so Utila Bay is a deep protected area (3500 foot deep between them). Probably 150 foot in the deepest part? (in an exploratory dive I stopped at 128 ft, briefly down the slope and back realizing I was way off target). The bay is open to the mainland continental shelf and not the open Caribbean, so no wave action there either, and to the north of the bay mouth are a cluster of shallow-water keys that also protect it. These geologic features make for some rather unusually indemnity.
Utila sports many of the classic cone Caribbean cone species. Example, Conus cardinalis is found at Utila, but not Roatan. This species is replaced completely by C. Kulkulkan which has very distinguishing differences.
C. k. is found in a variety of colors form brilliant red to browns and olives. It is highly sexually dimorphic. Males are small and even more color divergent. Females tend to be large like cardinalis and more frequently red like cardinalis. However, the bodies of C. k. are a drab hard to describe red-orange-olive color male and female, and C. c. is bright red. There are other morphological differences to, but I'd have to look them up. In 1995/96 studies with San Francisco State U. we dissected quite a few to determine gender. Unfortunately the molecular work was never finished since my lab mentor passed away.
Also a possible Bay of Utila endemic cone was never sequenced and described. It was a small (.5-.8") but plentiful textured turnip shaped species with a highly-variable pattern, and was only found on 1 trip, the return trips in 1995/1996 of specimen sampling produced none. Utila also sports the contested species Voluta sunderlandi. Conus harlandi and C. sunderlandi are found on all 3 islands, but do display some notable morphological differences between different populations.
I imagine the health of the Utila bay is rather poor now. In 1988 the bay had little brown algae, by 1995 it was quite heavy. Now 20 years later with over-development, I predict a near-dead bay due to over nutrients. All toilets flowed into it.
Leslie
-----Original Message-----
From: Conchologists List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Kirsh
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2016 3:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CONCH-L] Where are the comb murexes?
Hi Les,
Were the Siphonal canals 90 degrees to the substrate--or at varying angles?
David Kirsh, LPC, RN
----------------------
I was thinking a wave or return tug might have moved a bank of sand seaward and righted them :-)
Martin
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