Almost true, Charles.
 
Mark's marine biologist was pointing him in the right direction.
A seashell on a shelf is little more than that -- with or without
data. It is a snapshot of a biological event and has about as much
value -- to someone lacking knowledge of biological flow from which it
was plucked -- as a snapshot of my wedding has to a native of the
Amazon rain forest who has never heard of or seen people outside
of his/her isolated tribe.
 
I mean, really, they are little more than trinkets and curios. To
the abjectly ignorant, they are stunning items -- but their overall
'scientific value' is overrated.
 
I know folks don't want their collections "dissed" like this, but
who is going to 'use' the 'data' and what kinds of conjectures would
arise from such attempts. Compared to the living environment that
shell came out of, what can be divined -- and that is very nearly the
correct word -- from its existence and a few paltry facts, no matter
how precise or 'valid,' about that environment without existing
knowledge of that environment?
 
What was said at the start needs to be repeated. If someone is
ignorant of the 'context' of the specimen -- at the time and place
it was collected -- what value does it have other than esthetic
appeal and, thus, commercial value.
 
Before closing, I'd like those of you who are abandoning your
collections to have my shipping address where I'll accept those
worthless chuncks of calcium carbonate, freight prepaid, ........
 
Aloha,
 
Bob Dayle
 
 
P.S. There is are GOOD reasons to keep your collections, and I know
at least one very fine one, but I'm not telling yet.