Random thoughts:
1. I wish I had a shell club here in central Ohio, USA. I do not see how a shell club is anything but beneficial to molluscs. How can even the most inactive club possibly be better than nothing at all in terms of educating the public?
2. The idea that collecting for collecting's sake is wrong is... wrong. Our museums are based, in large part, by the accumulation of "natural history cabinets," people who regarded shells (and anything else of a natural history nature) as a curiosity to be acquired. They acquired them before anyone else and placed them into their Curiosity Cabinets, where at some point they were described by later scholars. Had they not amassed them, for whatever reason, they may not have been unrecognized.
3. The idea that fulfilling a list, the "postage stamp" approach, is wrong is also wrong. I collect Muricidae. I attempt to collect ALL of them. I would be a happy camper if I had EVERY species. Send me your Muricidae! I would suggest that these collectors know every bit as much about their respective groups as do the professionals and probably supply the professionals with fodder to describe. How can you toss aside such knowledge?
4. The idea that professional malacologists, or at least "serious collectors," should be able to collect shells rather than amateurs is often implied in related arguments. There is nothing magical about modern malacologists. Most "amateurs" have forgotten more than "professional" malacologists will ever know, particularly geneticists. The field of malacology would be destitute without the input of amateurs, a fact that some of the Young Turks seem to have forgotten in their hegemony.
5. I work (and am paid to deal) with freshwater molluscs. I have studied them for decades. I am often asked to comment or even testify on their behalf. The idea that collectors are responsible for decimating a species is, in my opinion, ridiculous. No species has been driven to extinction by collectors, that I am aware of. Pollution, habitat loss, impoundment, and exotics are responsible for the demise of most species. But it is much easier to arrest a shell collector than it is to arrest a huge company. And a shell collector is much easier to show to a TV camera as the bad guy than a multi-million dollar faceless company. The same is true of collectors in Sanibel or wherever... it is just not cool to collect living animals as a hobby... or a science. But the beach dredgings continue, the dams continue, the pollution continues...
6. We live in an uncomfortable time for biologists. Animal rights' advocates have put our science under our own microscopes. In my lab we infest fish with parasitic mussel larvae in an effort to save these endangered species, but the fish have more protection and surveillance than my own kids! It is not cool to collect living animals, even for the sake of science.
I guess my summary of thoughts on this matter is:
a) The more clubs the better. Any dissemination of knowledge is better than nothing.
b) Collectors, even those for non-science, are NOT the problem. They are a fart in the wind compared to the industrialization and commercialization that is ravaging molluscan habitats.
G.Thomas Watters, PhD
Curator of Molluscs
Department of Evolution, Ecology & Organismal Biology
The Ohio State University
1315 Kinnear Rd.
Columbus, OH 43212 USA
v: 614-292-6170
f: 614-292-7774
>
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