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Inlay
Inlay 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.
Inlay Checking with several of the more knowledgeable shell collectors on Okinawa, I have found "E. ogasawarensis" to be just as rare now, as when Mr. Cate wrote his article. However, two more consecutive dives that week, in the same area, produced five more of these beautiful shells for me and one more for Phil. Unfortunately, all the rest of the shells we found, were found in the freshly dead state, laying in the sand at a depth of 115 to 125 ft. Since this is such an uncommon shell for this area, I thought I would share it with the H.S.N. readers, along with the vital statistics for the eight I found [see table]. You will notice they vary quite a bit although all but the one juvenile found alive, are fully mature.
QUESTION: Several years ago, when I lived in Vera Cruz, Mexico, I used to get a lot of sea shells (Macrocypria [sic] cervus) from the fishermen there. These shells were all perfect except for a small hole, which the fishermen said had been drilled by octopuses in order to extract the flesh. They always found a number of empty shells in the dens of octopuses, and these always had the tiny hole. If these holes were made by octopuses, what type could it have been? How would it make such a small hole? R.S., Calgary, Alberta.
ANSWER: Shell boring or drilling by octopuses is a recently discovered phenomenon. Fossil bivalves have been found that were apparently bored in the manner you describe, and recently researchers have found that some octopods bore both bivalves and gastropods. As for species, Octopus vulgaris apparently bores shells and this animal may have been responsible for the bored shells you found. It might also have been Octopus maya, a related species common in the Vera Cruz area. The precise mechanism of boring is unknown, although it probably involves the chitonous radula, a rasp-like organ possessed by octopods and other molluscs. Chemical secretions from the salivary glands may help to dissolve the shell.
The above is from Sea Secrets, Volume 1, No. 1, Feb. 1970. Sea Secrets is published by the International Oceanographic Foundation, 10 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key, Miami, Florida 33149.
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