Greetings all,

Seems a little early in the year to be getting so chilly, doesn't it? Well,
to warm you up, I've posted some shots of the Spondylus I found in the Sea
of Cortez in September. What a task to clean these things!! But I was
amazed at the range of colors. One spot was literally carpeted in Spondylus
stretching off into the distance, but it was at 92 feet, and we had already
been down our maximum time, so I grabbed some of the smaller, spinier
specimens and headed up. Unfortunately, we never did return to that
particular spot, but I found several others in a different location at
about 65 feet, though in this spot, the specimens were more widely spaced.
There were many absolutely huge specimens there, but they had very few
spines and looked quite beat up, so we just got the smaller ones. If anyone
ever had doubts, Spondylus is doing quite well in the area around lower
Baja. And this is an area that is quite accessible to divers and indeed
thousands of divers visit these areas each year. Had we wanted to hire a
charter, we could have brought up many hundreds of Spondylus, and still
left the majority there! I believe most of these are Spondylus princeps,
but a few may be S. leucantha. Maybe someone with more experience can
clarify this. The photos can be viewed at:
http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=412573
in the BAJA SPONDYLUS album. I will also be posting some other finds (in
Seashells 6), as well as some gorgeous sunset photos this weekend (in the
VACATION folder).

Best regards,
Jim

Jim Miller
Tallahassee, Florida
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