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Gift items Shell collecting has also evolved to a high state. We can only be thankful that groups such as our Honored Society have successfully undertaken the task of stimulating and perpetuating an interest and understanding of shells and shell lore
This reef, if anything, presented an even more uninspiring spectacle than the one I had worked the previous day. Silty water lapped at slabs of black rock and colorless corals covered with a slimy scum. It was not the most enjoyable form of shelling by any means. The corals were sharp, and being only half exposed one had to lift them out of the water and balance them on one's knee in order to examine the underside. Cuts and scratches were unavoidable. An hour of backbreaking toil produced only a few live shells, among them C. errones, C. arabica arabica, lamarcki redimita, and one or two large C. vitellus. Suddenly, one of the fisherwomen who was searching nearby for mussels and rock shells for the evening's cooking pot, called to me. Stumbling about in ankle deep, muddy water I groped my way over to her to see what she wanted. [ photo - uncredited; published
inverted, corrected here; cropped.]
Specimen of Cypraea nivosa
54mm x 32mm x 26mm found
in a box containing C. zebra
(Linn), purchased by Mrs.
Kinloch from the late Mr. A. E.
Salisbury collection. Label is
the original but does not have
locality data.
Under a typically half-dead piece of coral she had turned over was a solitary Cypraea nivosa.
There it sat, the greyish, mottled mantle slowly retracting to expose the soft golden brown tints of the glossy dorsum peppered with off-white, smoky spots, some faintly tinged with olive hues, contrasting, yet in some inexplicable way subtly blending with the drab browns and greys of the coral. The irregular mantle line was not very prominent on this particular specimen and at first I thought it might be a freak C. vitellus. But the conspicuously raised ridges faintly tinged with purple around the anterior and posterior apertures dispelled any doubts.
Carefully, I eased the shell from its foothold and placed it in my shell bag. A reward for the finder? Of course, and well deserved. She acknowledged it with a toothless grin and resumed to her the much more important task of filling her basket with succulent mussels. It was at the same time the signal for a massive onslaught upon the reef by the villagers. Needless to say, no other C. nivosa was found there, although I was assured by our host that one had been found some months ago on the same reef.
Back in the sultry confines of our small room, I placed the C. nivosa in a specimen jar half-full of sea water and waited for it to adjust to the strange new environment. It was a long wait almost an hour. Finally, black tentacles probing the 'nothingness' and within another half-hour the shell was crawling quite confidently across the base of an upturned plate.
Within two days both specimens were en route to the British Museum of Natural History where the back room experts would doubtless soon be sharpening their scalpels and tweezers to conduct a comparative post mortem upon them.
Conclusions reached as the result of the rather superficial examination I was able to make are shown in the table below, left.
Gift items The northwestern tip of Sand Island near the entrance to Keehi Lagoon shows a definite pattern of water pollution. The "lingering odor" is a dead giveaway, of course. In addition to this, the Ulva reticulata is a heavy overgrowth on all the rocks and dead coral chunks and is of a deep blackish-green color. Referring to the map on Pg. 4, H.S.N. November 1964 edition, we see that in this area (marked Area 4) there is a sewer line leading out to sea and the water is comparatively shallow.
The C. caputserpentis observed in the Sand Island area are darker and generally larger, (from 29mm X 21mm to 37mm X 26mm) with some adults showing a definite dorsal stripe of darker color and a general blurring of the dorsal spots, plus the absence of the usual whitish blotches at anterior and posterior ends and a quite blackish base.
During March and the early part of April, Area 4 at Sand Island appears to be a "nursery" for C. caputserpentis. Virtually every rock we turned over during our shelling trips in this time period had at least one "bulla" caputserpentis - and often there were as many as four juveniles attended by a full-grown adult.
During this same time we observed a heavy population of large sea hares tending egg masses, and an exceptional number of fireworms (bristle worms) so caution is the word for littoral shelling at Sand Island, since the sting of these "pink sea-centipedes" is extremely painful.
A difference in the coloration of C. teres between the two aforementioned areas was noted during this same period of time. The two C. teres we collected at Sand Island were broader, larger and had a pinkish base, in contrast to the smaller, more slender white-based C. teres collected at Sandy Beach.
Since these observations are those of amateurs, and cover a limited area of one island in Philippines, we would be interested in observations from other areas around the world – testing our theory of a direct relationship between water pollution and shell coloring.
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