Mr. Krisburg has thrown down a gauntlet which probably has been
picked up by others by now (i get the messages as a once-a-day "digest",
so do not know what is going on moment-by-moment!!), but i would like to
get a word in on this topic. While the majority of collectors (ie,
"amateur" conchologists - those who are involved with shells just for
the love of these often beautiful, and always interesting natural
creations!!) are perhaps less than completely "scientific" in their
collection methods and objectives, there are a good # of collectors
(incl. about 50% of my customers!!) who HAVE, and CONTINUE to make
excellent contributions to the sciences of conchology and malacology, in
at least a half-dozen major ways (intensive collection of a particular
area- beyond what overworked, under-funded scientists can generally
accomplish, often nearly-fanatical scrutiny of particular faunal
groups, ....no time to list them here, but they are indeed important to
the world of science, even if the work is not always done by those "most
qualified" to do it!! Further, even many of the
"unscientifically-oriented" collectors acquire specimens with good data,
which wind up in museum or institutional collections used by
"accredited" scientists; and with marine collection in particular, the
great majority of collectors of ALL kinds do little damage to the
environment they are collecting from. The few that do end up doing
harm, should be reprimanded, and more importantly, EDUCATED by the rest
of us.
"Scientists" and "amateurs" have, do, and should continue to work
together, for the advancement of knowledge, and the protection of the
natural world from the *** ONLY*** species capable of destroying it-
ie, US!! (And if some are only or mainly intersted in the beauty of
shells, there is surely a place for them in our world as well!!!).
Canadian-with-vested-interest on a soap-box,
Ross M.
P.S.: I am myself an example of one who "came up through the ranks" of
beauty-seeker to scientist. My first 2 y ears in conchology were spent
amassing a poorly-organized pile of about 1200 spp of mollusc shells.
Then, i managed to warp and industrial-ty pe grant into a format which
permitted me to process and ID the mollucs in 100 sediment samles from
near Sable Island. My initial objectives were simply to get as many
species as possible out of the bargain (it is a common and scandalous
practice to discard the specimens from all manner of samles collected at
great expense to taxpayers, after they have been "identified" by a
motley assortment of independant contractors and consultants- not even
saving an index collection!!), and to make a bit of money in the
process. However, i soon found the material to be so fascinating (0ver
150 spp- a third of all our shell-bearing molluscan fau na, from Cape
Cod (southern boundary of the Gulf of Maine), to the North pole and
Canadian Basin !!), that i gave up collecting "tropical" spp, sold my
collection for Development and Relief work, and took up curation and
taxonomy as my "conchological" pursuit. As a result, most of the
region's major collections have been re-cu rated a little better than
they were before, and the assemblage of material i saved from the Sable
Is. material has grown into the most complete collection of E.Canadian
shell-bearing mollucs actually IN Canada (most of the great early
expeditions collecting our material were financed from E urope, so a lot
of overseas institutions have WAY better collections of our spp than can
be found in the country they were taken from (a bit like the British
archaological expeditions to Egypt!!)). Also, a fair bit of
"publishable" work has been done- hopefully to see the inside of
refereed journals "eventually"!! SO, to return to the topic, if i had
not started out by simply being attracted by the beauty and fascination
of shells, this scientific work would never have been done! If i had
been banned from collecting, as an " unacredited amateur", i would never
have become involve in the hard-core scientific side of "the Shell
World"!! I suspect my story is in no way unique.
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