Hi Ross,

Your comments on the difficulty of keeping opercs
matched when dealing with buckets of specimens were
right on the mark. The way I deal with ensuring opercs
are correctly matched to the exact correct specimen is
that I use the microwave or freeze/thaw method to kill
and loosen the animal, then I retrieve the operc while
removing as much of the animal as possible using
dental tools, and then I create the specimen ID tag
with full data including shell size measured with high
resolution calipers. The operc goes in a small plastic
zip lock specimen bag with the tag and then I just
have to keep my bag of tags associated with the
correct bucket of shells. It may take weeks before the
shells are fully cleaned and dried but when they are
ready for bagging I get out the calipers and match
specimens by size with the correct operc. The only
caveat is that I find my shells (particularly Conus)
tend to "shrink" a little during cleaning but by
laying out the shells and the tagged opercs in order
of size for each species the correct operc and shell
can be rejoined.

All the best from warm and sunny San Diego,

John & Lynette

PS. Russ, our apologies for never sending you any
shells as we had been discussing, but our life took a
dramatic turn when we interrupted our cruising and
collecting to return to high-pressure jobs. Hopefully
we will be "back out there" collecting in just a few
years.



--- "J. Ross Mayhew" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Opercs present a perennial problem for shells
> collectors and dealers:
> they are an important part of the animal's
> exoskeleton, hence complement
> the shell portion nicely, yet they are separate from
> it, hence easy to
> misplace during the cleaning process, which often
> involves chlorine
> products - which have an unfortunate tendancy to eat
> most operculi :(.
> When only a couple of specimens are involved, there
> is no problem,  but
> when one is cleaning a decent-sized "batch" of
> operculate shells of
> similar size, it is tricky to ensure that each shell
> ends up matched up
> with its original operc when all the chips are down.
>  Hence, the great
> majority of collectors and dealers are usually
> *quite* happy if their
> shells end up with an operc from the same species,
> and of a size which
> more or less fits the shell's aperature.  However,
> as we have been
> reading for the past couple of days, that doesn't
> always happen.......
> the most extreme example i've heard on this topic,
> was a seller of
> shells who kept a drawer full of opercs, mostly of
> the family
> Muricidae.  When a shell came along which "should"
> have had an operc in
> his opinion, he would simply hop on over to the
> drawer and see what
> could be found, drawing upon his memory of what the
> species' "trap door"
> would normally look like, to avoid too manay REALLY
> obvious errors.  //
> There is also at least one person on Conch-l who
> collects mainly opercs,
> perhaps because they take up far less space than the
> shells they
> represent, but it must also be admitted that when
> studied closely, they
> have a beauty of their own which often goes
> un-noticed by those
> primarily interested in the shell whose builder they
> were designed to
> protect.
>
> Waiting form the rain in a balmy (for November!!)
> New Scotland,
> Ross Mayhew.
>
>
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