Fellow shellers,
I'm back from my 2 week trip. I'll be glad to fill people in on some of the
travel details if anyone wants.
As for shelling, now I know why no one knew about Southwest India: there
are apparently no accessible reefs. Shells are mostly pounded to bits on
the beaches; not even any shell grit for micros. However, there are shells
in Kerala. Where I stayed in Varkala, Kerala, the locals told me that after
the monsoons have passed for a month or so, the visibility clears so that
it is possible to snorkel over the offshore rocks and find plenty of
sealife. Usual means to get there are the three logs lashed together that
most fisherman use. There were beached shells in good numbers south of
Varkala in a spot where the "backwaters" (lagoon) open to the sea. In an
hour jaunt, found Murex, Sinum, Terebras and other goodies. There are also
some shells on the rocks at low tide. Couldn't leave India without a chank
shell, so I bought one from a local fisherman who said he got it in four
meters of water off the beach. NB: bring your own methyl alcohol because it
is prohibited in Kerala. I had to obtain formalin for my small live shells.
I was lucky that customs didn't insist on opening my shell pack and get a
whiff on the way back home.
I found out that the airfare from Trivandrum (capital of Kerala) to
Colombo, Sri Lanka is about $110 round trip. So I took a four day stint to
a recommended resort town of Hikkaduwa, three hours bus ride south of
Colombo. As I had been told, there were shells. Yes, well, I was a virgin
to the Indo-Pacific faunal region. I'd been to many spots in the Caribbean
and to Gulf of California but nothing like this. I didn't even get to
explore the reef (too rough). Just in the place where the edge of the reef
meets the beach, there was a staggering number of shells. Every time I
looked there was something else I had never seen. Maybe some of you have
gotten jaded about this, but I never saw a place where there were six or
more species of live Cypraea in inch-deep water. No to mention plenty of
other types of mollusks.
And the shell grit under magnification was kind of like looking at a
treasure chest of jewels with a multitude of pastel colors and sculpturing.
Something new each time I scanned a different place in the drift. I don't
know if any of it is unusual but it was quite an experience for me.
On the way back through Kuwait, I stayed at a hotel that wasn't the airport
hotel for transit passengers. That took some extraordinary gyrations and
considerable expense for me. (My advice is to get your Kuwaiti visa in
advance of a visit, perhaps through a 3-star-or-less hotel). The beach near
the Hotel Safir International, right by Applebee's and Chili's, has plenty
of shells.
Some of my immediate questions from the trip are:
1) What books are going to identify the micros from Sri Lanka? Any?
2) What is a 1/2 inch long mollusk whose shell looks like a fat taco open
on one side and pointed on the other? The animal is light orange with a
bright orange and a black stripe. Lives around green algae in tide pool.
3) Is Seashells of Eastern Arabia likely to be useful for Kerala (on the
Arabian Sea) and Kuwait (Persian Gulf)? Is that the same book as Shells of
Muscat and Oman?
4) Does anyone have a count of the known sinistral chank shells in existence?
5) Anyone venture a guess about the one live shell very abundant on the
beach at Varkala? (It's their version of the Coquina). It's a Terebra about
1 and 1/4 inches long. Subsutural axial wrinkles tend to fade out toward
the body whorl. Extremely variable colors: from pure white to deep wine and
black, some are orange or rose, or those colors with white bands. Animal is
off-white and very active.
More questions are bound to come up.
David Kirsh
Durham, NC
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