Hunting for shells (modern or fossil) can be a highly competitive activity.
It's fun to go in groups to collect shells, but not as much fun when people
throw off restraint. Examples of rude behavior include:
 
Rushing ahead to the site to collect the best material before anyone else.
 
Collecting at the site the day before the club field trip.
 
Pilfering shells that someone else has collected and left unattended.
 
Lying about where a shell was collected to protect the site, or giving
purposefully misleading directions.
 
Destroying shells rather than letting someone else have them (yes, this
actually happens, and scientists have been known to do it, too!)
 
It's not considered rude to protect a site by not disclosing the locality,
although of course it reduces its scientific value nearly to zero. And it's
not considered rude to keep several shells of a species for yourself while
others with you have found none. But it's still rather unpleasant.
 
Shell collecting does not have to be a competitive activity all of the
time. Especially in small groups, where everyone has approximately the same
skills and willingness to put in hard work, cooperation can replace
competition. For instance, each member of the group can work a different
part of the area, with different species in each. Toward the end of the
day, the finds are pooled and distributed evenly on the "I divide, you
decide" principle. Common shells are plentiful enough to divide evenly,
whereas unique and gem specimens are set aside and distributed by lot, so
everyone gets a full suite of the common species, and everyone gets some of
the best specimens as well. Of course, you have to give up the idea of
"finders, keepers" to make this work, and it does work best where material
is plentiful (which is especially so for dead or fossil shells). For most
groups, it's probably better for everyone to keep what they have and then
trade the excess.
 
Does the method work? For veteran collectors, it's probably best in very
small groups. I used this method successfully with another curator (James
Lamb of the Red Mountain Museum) at Little Stave Creek, where about 50
species are common and 350 others are uncommon to rare. We both knew that
all the specimens would end up in a public museum either way, so in a sense
it didn't matter. But we still had an attachment to some shells that we
collected personally. At the end of the day, I put the shells into piles.
James would pick up two unique beauties and put them behind his back. Then
I'd choose. Oh, the heartbreak when I didn't get the specimen I wanted the
best for our collection! But this added to the fun, and it felt good to
cooperate; we both remember it as a wonderful day. Both museums ended up
with large collections of equivalent value. (I might add that James
suspended himself from a bluff to collect some of the shells, while I
pulled the rope over so he could reach more of the outcrop, and he handed
the fossils down to me. Whose fossils were those?)
 
For a class of schoolchildren, or a club field trip, the method might work
pretty well, and would teach the value of cooperation. It's worth a try,
eh?
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama