Everything I ever read about the Flame Auger has said it is,
and has been, uncommon to rare in Florida.  Were they
ever locally common?  As for the Hydatina shells, they are
attractive to a few interested collectors, but I don't know as
I would call them broadly collectible.  I might pick up a
couple of dead ones, since they look curious, but I can't
imagine people out making hauls of live ones?  I don't know
of any commercial market for them, really, other than a few
serious and semi-serious people who might actually consti-
tute a market for a few dozen specimens.  Your realize that
Hydatina physis populations are notoriously unpredictable?
You could almost call them cyclical, except they don't follow
an extremely regular cycle.  Sometimes they are abundant,
and sometimes they disappear for months or even years.

Commercial collecting can be a problem, of course.  It may
be that commercial collecting of the Fighting Conchs has
thinned them out in places.  (You could probably buy several
thousand of them on eBay right now.)  However, I'm absolutely
convinced that those collector friends who took six specimens
each had nothing at all to do with the demise of your local
population.  If the correct habitat remains, and the commercial
value isn't so great that thousands of people would make a
business out of collecting and selling them, (as in this case...
http://www.psmfc.org/recfin/pub/kelp/no6/WHITEAB.htm )
it's hard to imagine that you could do more than thin them out
at any one spot.  Even if you wanted to keep collecting the
same low-value species over and over, why wouldn't you just
move on to another area where they were still common, instead
of trying to scrape up the last few from the original location?
If the conchs are disappearing, and they aren't reappearing
on Florida restaurant menus, I'll venture a guess that the
habitat is changing.  If the habitat is changing, my next guess
is that it's not the guys who go out and pick up six specimens
who are changing it.

Cheers,


Don

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