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Coco shells
Coco shells Ed deVaul found a Conus spiceri and two Harpa amouretta off Makua at 80' and Al Kekoa has brought up six more C. tessellata from 60-70 feet in Moanalua Bay over four weekends.
The South China Sea is a mecca for shell collectors, with many interesting shells from that area coming into our hands through Formosan fishermen and shell dealers.
We have received such rare sea shells as Erosaria guttata (Gmelin), Schilderia hirasei (Roberts), S. teramachii (Kuroda), S. langfordi (Kuroda) and Gratiadusta hungerfordi (Sowerby). Recently we got a lovely new cowry from the South China Sea. Schilderia sakuraii, described by Habe in the Bulletin of the Biogeographical Society of Japan, vol. 24, no. 10, pp. 67-69. The nearest ally is S. hirasei, but it is larger in size and has paler coloration than our new species. We have examined four specimens of S. sakuraii.
The shell is thick and heavy with rounded humped back. Dorsal surface is covered with brown clouds of densely set transverse lines and bars divided into two parts by the white line of the mantle.
In "The Living sea shells" describing Cypraea asellus, Dr. C. M. (Pat) Burgess comments: "This strikingly different small species stands out in any company. The alternating jet black and pure white dorsal bands are unmistakable." We agree with Dr. Pat that this is a beautiful shell.
Shown in the above picture are three highly unusual specimens of this small sea shell along with a standard shell (left specimen). Then there is one specimen with a solid black dorsum. Another has four black bands instead of the normal three. And at right is a brown rather than jet black shell and also with an odd pattern. These shells are all from the private collection of Iain Gower and were live collected by him in the waters of Guadalcanal.
In speaking of the rarity of these shells, Gower tells us they were selected from over twenty-five thousand specimens and were the only ones found of each type. Gower is a well known shell dealer who lives at Guadalcanal, British Solomon Islands.
Erronea barclayi has been established by Reeve in 1857 by describing an unique shell said to come from Diego Garcia, Chagos Is.; this holotype is preserved in coll. Saul in Cambridge, England (see Schilder 1932, Zoolog. Anzeiger 100:171).
The following hundred years no second specimen has been discovered, though in many collections other sea shell species erroneously have been labeled E. barclayi.
Coco shells The pair of Cypraea marginata Gaskoin, 1848, pictured on the left are the light Southern Australian variety, with a pure white background and brown spotting. The two darker C. marginata on the right side are the Western Australian type which has a brown mottling on a white base.
In recent months Mr. Castle has collected several C. marginata which are a delicate pink rather than the usual white Southern kind. These are unquestionably one of the most attractive sea shells this writer has ever viewed. The usual white is pink but the shell still has the normal small brown spotting. It is a strikingly beautiful shell to say the least.
Castle also explodes another theory on C. marginata. Some shell experts have called the light [shell] a male and the darker shell the female. However, he advises us that he has cleaned a number of the light Southern shells and analysis has proven them to be both male and female, the male shells usually being the larger.
We thank Trevor Castle for sending us this picture and data.
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