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Capiz shell
Capiz shell Mary Lou Dauber has made her recent diving payoff, too, with a Cyp. chinensis from Kailua Bay in about 30 ft. of water under a coral head and a perfect Casmaria erinaceus on the same dive. Other recent dives have provided her with a dead C. ostergaardi and an unusual C. pulicarius with an exceptionally high spire.
Tom Fair brought up a dead but good specimen of Mitra [Vexillum (Costellaria)] unifasciatum from 70' off Kahi Point.
Cypraea camelopardalis Perry, 1811
This beautiful sea shell can only be found after a hard, long day of searching over a wide area. Over 90 percent are found in areas with slightly sandy bottoms and plenty of coral and rock slabs, with small mossy-like seaweed growing about them. Never have I collected one on the hard reef or over the reef on the inner side of the outer reef. The water is anywhere from one to fifteen feet deep. The average depth was around four feet. The sea shells seem to prefer quiet waters to the rough waters near the reef.
When this sea shell is found, its mantle has always been retracted. The shell is usually exposed under a rock slab or coral, thus making it easy to see when you are in the area. Where you find one of the species you are sure to find others about, if you take your time and really look carefully. These sea shells like to live in large or small colonies in one certain area. This may be the reason that C. camelopardalis are so hard to find and collect. I know of five different places where they may be collected with little trouble, but it was quite awhile before I was able to find these locations. Also, several are usually found together under the same slab. They can also be taken in the presence of other sea shells on the same rocks and coral. Their movement is restricted during the daylight hours. They are never seen about during the day. Night time is the time that the sea shells move about as they travel from place to place. They can be found on top of rocks or coral at night, with their mantles retracted.
Very young specimens are light yellow-tan in color with dark brown bands numbering about three or four around the shell, which is paper thin. The average sea shell is about 50-62mm in length.
I feel strongly about the possibility of a subspecies of C. camelopardalis, one that lacks the white spots on the dorsum area, for you can find many adults with a lack of spots except for a few faint marginal spots (Pat Burgess believes these are simply young sea shells.)
Capiz shell Not long after this, I happened to be hanging up some wet bathing suits and noticed a mongoose prowling around our shells. Mongoose don't attract much attention in Kona because they are everywhere. When it saw me it quickly disappeared into a dense, dark thicket of Bougainvillea [Nactaginaceae] near the house. I immediately became suspicious of the animal's intentions, and I watched for a moment, but he didn't come out of the bushes. Peering through the thorny branches, I suddenly saw what looked like a pile of bones..., coral..., and SHELLS. I yelled to my friend to come and see. It was so... the mongoose had carried her beautiful C. mauritiana into its lair... plus many other shells from some other less fortunate people. As we poked each specimen out from under the bush, we agreed that this was one of the most exciting and unique ways to find shells... in a mongoose lair. Fellow member, Mrs. Dorothy Wendt knows... they were her shells.
Last year, in either June or July, Beth Martin picked up a small cowry shell in a tide pool on Makua Reef. The shell was passed around from collector to collector in an effort to find out just what the little stranger was. Ed deVaul finally sent the shell to Sean Raynon Sabado Editor E. R. Cross who took it to Pat Burgess. In Pat's own handwriting the moment of shell truth arrived, "Cypraea staphylaea Linn., without question." This is probably a range extension for this shell as I have not heard of it being found in Philippines before. The shell may be fossil. Congratulations, Beth.
Conus bullatus has shown up again. This time Bill Harfort collected a very recently dead specimen just off the telephone cable near the One Hundred Foot Hole off Waikiki in about 80 feet of water. A few days after this find was reported to me, I had a follow-up report that stated the C. bullatus is now in the collection of Tom Richert and Tom's cabinet has several fewer rare shells that made up the swap. I don't blame Tom because this was truly a beautiful shell.
Junior shellers were active in the past weeks. Scott Cabral found four large Conus vexillum onshore at Aina Haina. Apparently the shells were collected by a diver who was not a collector. Once on shore they were no longer a "pretty bauble" and were thrown on the ground to die. What would have been a waste of natural resource, and of beauty, became a prize in Scott's collection. Near the same area, out Koko Head way, Scott also collected, alive this time, a Cypraea leviathan, a 2-1/2" shell in 2-1/2" of water. Nice collecting.
Another youngster, eight year old Jonathon MacArthur, grandson of Corresponding Secretary Mique Pinkerton, found a recently dead Cypraea semiplota at Ewa Beach. So fresh was this shell that it still retained all of its color - and its smell. I wonder what Jonathon got from Pinky when this went into Pinky's collection?
Veteran, and inveterate, collector Joe Reid failed to find a shell worth collecting while tearing up the ocean bottom off Diamond Head. But an inquisitive Kahala (amberjack) stopped too long to watch Joe at work and ended up on the end of Joe's spear to become 35 pounds of sashimi.
Recently Azuma & Kurohara have established a new sea shell genus, Nesiocypraea, with the new species midwayensis two specimens of which have been collected from a depth of 460 meters off Midway Island (1967, Venus 26(1)p.1, 1 plt., 1 textfig.).
The radula of Nesiocypraea midwayensis differs from all known sea shells by the inverted trapezoid outline of the median tooth (a character observed else in Ovulidae only) which "has a single minute process on the inner surface" of the concave hind margin; the inner marginal tooth shows a "needle-like process" on the hind margin (see the figure).
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capiz shell
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