Dear Tink,

Bear in mind that data for beached shells tell you nothing about the
habitat of the living animal, and can sometimes be totally erroneous.
There've been instances of Indo-Pacific shells being found on Florida
beaches - the result of a child buying a basket of "tourist shells" in a
local shell shop and then wandering along the beach dropping a few...

There are plenty of well-known instances of commercial shelling
decimating shell populations, but I hope that there are no recent
examples of "serious" shell collectors doing damage.  (Anyone want to
mention any?!)  I know hundreds of shell collectors all round the world,
and I find them to be uniformly eco-minded.  Conscientious collectors of
live molluscs only take the very best specimens, and for almost all
species that means that only a tiny proportion are going to be perfect
enough (and adult).  Commercial collectors just scoop up every single
specimen available, which is a sure way to damage the population.

As a shell dealer myself, I know that the vast majority of collectors
want live-taken specimens - mainly for the colour and well-preserved
sculpture, but also for the reliability of the data.  (Yes, I do sell
dead-collected specimens too, but the price has to be a small fraction
of the price of a live gem.)




-----Original Message-----
From: Conchologists of America List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Erin White
Sent: 17 August 2003 01:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Introduction and Greetings from Long Island, NY

Hello to all at CONCH-L!  I'm very glad to have found this list.

My name is Erin, but my friends call me Tink.  I am a fairly newbie
shell collector who hails from Long Island, New York.  I enjoy the act
of shelling because I find it soothing and relaxing, and because there
is some beautiful stuff to be found.  The joy of the hunt can be
exhilirating.

You'd think coming from an Island, I'd have found lots of shells here at
home, but that is not the case.  The bay beaches can yield some snails
around the jetties or maybe some clam halves, but that's about it here.
I've been going to Sanibel the past three summers, and even though it is
"off season" for shells in the summer, I still find some treasures.

I'm going to poke in the archives here for a while to see what I can
learn, but I've got two questions right off the bat:

1.  I've only ever taken empty shells found on the beach, on sand bars,
or in the shallows.  I understand from reading on the internet that some
people will take a live shell.  I'm not sure what I think of this.
First, there is the "ick" factor of having to pull the animal out of the
shell.  Second, I'm not sure if it quite sits right with me to kill
something just because you want it's shell.  Somehow, it just doesn't
seem fair.  I've even seen comments around the internet that would
indicate to me that it is more of a "find" if the animal is still inside
and still alive when the shell is found.  So I wanted to ask, what does
everyone here think, from an ethical point of view, about collectors
taking live shells?

2.  I've noticed that everyone here uses the Latin names for shells.
Can anyone reccomend a good internet source to look up the Latin names
and see pictures?  It's hard to know what you are talking about or learn
the names myself without some sort of reference guide or index to look
things up.  What is everyone's favorite internet reference, preferably
searchable?

I'm hoping to learn a lot here about my relatively new interest in
shells.

Regards,
Tink *~*~*