After years of serious consideration,  i have finally and firmly
decided not to
sell or trade for commercial reasons, ANY Canadian mollusc shells,
except for Placopecten magellanicus (which has truly excellent
variability, but when trawled, "less than perfect" (to be kind!!)
lips-gemmaniacs need not apply!) and Chlamys islandica, which i can get
from time to time from Labrador, in various attractive colors: nothing
else, from now on.  Although this will have some impact on my
third-world  development fund-raising project (Schooner Specimen Shells-
Please excuse the plug!), i take this step in order to improve my
scientific reputation, which suffers because my activities as a dealer.
Also, there has been a constant conflict of interest between my
curatorial work on local reference collections- if i found a rare
Epitonidae worth $100+, i had to decide whether there were "enough" of
them in local scientific collections to permit me to sell, trade or
donate it for the benefit of my project.  Believe me, it was a
nightmare, and i will admit to making a few foolish decisions.  This
public announcement of a blanket  ban will remove the temptation, since
if i henceforth deal in this "forbidden material", i would lose any
credibility i  may now have, as much of the "shell world" will have
heard of
my promise!!  I will not deal in material from Arctic or west-coast
Canada either, although i will continue to handle  boreal and Arctic
material from other countries, since this constitutes a good chunk of
Schooner's business.
 
        I will continue to trade CLEARLY redundant material on a
scientific basis-
local material in exchange for spp which occur in eastern or arctic
Canada as well as other countries- and similar spp, for  taxonomic
comparison.  This material will be added to local scientific
collections, especially the one i started at a fishies research
institute in the Halifax area (the Bedford Institute of Oceanography),
which is the best all-round East-coast Canadian shell-bearing mollusc
collection (actually IN Canada, ie!), if anyone ever wishes to visit my
little corner of the
planet for research reasons. (If the gigantic back-log of material at
the Museum of Natural History in Ottawa is ever curated, it will be
about 10000% better than mine, but for now much of its best material,
including a magnificent Arctic colleciton from a recently-mothballed
research institute in Quebec, remains uncurated, hence inaccessible.). I
will also trade material for photographic services, by the way.
 
Sincerly,
 
Ross Mayhew.
 
PS: I will also trade Eastern Canadian material clearly redundant to
scientific
requirements (ie, nothing uncommon), for the small plastic containers i
use at the BIO collection, since the company in Florida i once obtained
them from seems to have gone out of business, and other sources are
more expensive.