Hello to all at CONCH-L!  I'm very glad to have found this list.

My name is Erin, but my friends call me Tink.  I am a fairly newbie shell collector who hails from Long Island, New York.  I enjoy the act of shelling because I find it soothing and relaxing, and because there is some beautiful stuff to be found.  The joy of the hunt can be exhilirating.

You'd think coming from an Island, I'd have found lots of shells here at home, but that is not the case.  The bay beaches can yield some snails around the jetties or maybe some clam halves, but that's about it here.  I've been going to Sanibel the past three summers, and even though it is "off season" for shells in the summer, I still find some treasures.

I'm going to poke in the archives here for a while to see what I can learn, but I've got two questions right off the bat:

1.  I've only ever taken empty shells found on the beach, on sand bars, or in the shallows.  I understand from reading on the internet that some people will take a live shell.  I'm not sure what I think of this.  First, there is the "ick" factor of having to pull the animal out of the shell.  Second, I'm not sure if it quite sits right with me to kill something just because you want it's shell.  Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair.  I've even seen comments around the internet that would indicate to me that it is more of a "find" if the animal is still inside and still alive when the shell is found.  So I wanted to ask, what does everyone here think, from an ethical point of view, about collectors taking live shells?

2.  I've noticed that everyone here uses the Latin names for shells.  Can anyone reccomend a good internet source to look up the Latin names and see pictures?  It's hard to know what you are talking about or learn the names myself without some sort of reference guide or index to look things up.  What is everyone's favorite internet reference, preferably searchable?

I'm hoping to learn a lot here about my relatively new interest in shells.

Regards,
Tink *~*~*