Dear friends,
 
Sorry to bring back to life the Sanibel ban thread, but I was out of town
(Orlando with my family) during the Thanksgiving weekend and almost missed
all the action (and I don't know much about shelling in Phuket, Andy!). I
want to congratulate Lynn Scheu for her excellent exposition on the issue
of shelling bans. Whenever the Shell Museum and myself get involved in
local discussions about the Sanibel ban I invoke two major conceptual
problems with it. The first one was the lack of scientific evidence to
support the ban in the first place. Nobody knew for sure whether there was
a decline in the local molluscan populations caused by
harvesting/gathering/collecting. Even if scientific evidence had shown
declines in numbers, it would be hard to blame solely live-shell collecting
(in the broad sense) and not a myriad of other environmental factors,
human-induced or not, without additional scientific studies. This is
further complicated by the large number of shallow-water species (Gundersen
lists about 300 of them in his excellent guide) and the huge differences
among them in reproductive habits, dispersal abilities, responses to
environmental factors, and other biological attributes. The second problem
was the "lumping", so perfectly explained by Lynn in her posting, of
bucket-toting tourists with occasional shellfish gatherers and legit
scientifically oriented shell collectors, all equally affected by our city
ordinance.  This is a case where many are paying for the mistakes of a few
and, in my opinion, the authorities should have devised a way of
identifying the different categories of "shell collectors" either by
setting bag limits and/or issuing collecting permits bundled with
educational brochures, etc.  I was interviewed by a couple of folks
involved in a planned, future shelling ban (total or partial) in the City
of Fort Myers Beach (for Conch-Lers outside Florida, the beach to the
southeast of Sanibel). These were the main points I emphasized during my
conversations with them, and my current views on an issue that, in spite of
being local to Sanibel, evidently has broader ramifications. As a
postscript to Mark about the demise of alphabet cones, live alphabet and
Florida cones were found at low tide in the Lighthouse area during last
winter's storms; these provided, according to many old-timers, some of the
best shelling in many years.
 
Best to all,
 
Jose
__________________________________________________________________________
Jose H. Leal, Ph.D.
Director, The Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum
Editor-in-chief, THE NAUTILUS
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http://www.uwp.edu/academic/biology/bmsm/bm_shell.htm
3075 Sanibel-Captiva Road
Sanibel, FL 33957 USA
(941) 395-2233; fax (941) 395-6706