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Ornament
Ornament The day was perfect, sunny and warm. The water was perfect – very calm and smooth, with a low tide of 0.8 ft making for an uncommonly easy access to the deep waters off Bolo Point, Okinawa (East China Sea). After working the medium depth area of 70 to 80 ft for a while, my diving partner, Phil Whitelock and I dropped down to the deeper waters of 115 to 125 ft. Then, while combing the sand and broken coral at the base of a sheer vertical cliff, I caught a glimpse of gold in the sand. It was a beautiful small sea shell of a bright, golden hue - dead, but obviously fresh dead. At the time, I didn't know what I had found; but I knew I didn't have one in my collection and couldn't recall seeing one in any of the local collections I was familiar with. [photos - uncredited]
After several more minutes of vain searching of the sand for more, I gave up and started a gradual accent up the wall of the underwater canyon I was in. Then, I saw another flash of gold, this time in a small crack in the wall. It was another "golden" sea shell – this time, alive. In the same crack with it was a live juvenile. Although I can't be positive at this time, I do feel that the juvenile is the same as it's "crack-mate."
When Phil and I compared "finds" back at our car, we discovered that he had also found one of the "golden" sea shells – alive. Once back at home with our reference books, we found our "golden" sea shells to be "Erosaria cernica ogasawarensis" (Schilder, 1944), shown above. Crawford N. Cate writes in his Length Width Height Lip
Teeth Col.
Teeth
[in mm.]
25.1 17.9 14.0 21 16 largest mature shell
25.0 16.5 13.8 18 15
24.0 18.0 13.8 18 16
23.4 15.5 13.0 18 17
22.5 16.6 12.0 18 18
22.4 16.8 12.2 19 17
20.3 14.9 11.1 19 18 smallest mature shell
18.0 11.8 9.5 14 14 juvenile (?)
"sea shells of the Ryukyu Islands" in Vol. 10 - No. 1, page 31 of The Veliger, that this sea shell can be considered very rare for Okinawa. At that time, only one had been found, and that had been found by Bernice Albert on April 7, 1966.
Ornament Great series collected in the Persian Gulf (coll. Tomlin) usually vary from 26 - 32mm, those coming from Karachi (leg. Winckworth 1932) from 26 - 31mm; in the last named area, the shells labeled Karachi (general), Manora, Baba Island, Oyster Rocks, and Ibrahim Haidari vary from 26 - 30, 24 - 31, 27 - 31, 27 - 30, and 26 - 31mm, respectively. Two sets collected at Bombay (coll. Shopland and coll. Tomlin) are also large (25 - 31mm) in southern India, however, E. ocellata is distinctly smaller: in a series of 49 shells from Madras (coll. 1966, recently presented me by F. B. Steiner) the usual length is 20 - 26mm, in 42 shells from Ceylon (various collections) 18 - 25mm, besides populations collected by Winckworth (in 1928 - 1935) at Mount Lavinia near Colombo 21 - 24mm and in Trincomali 18 - 23mm. Two shells only collected at Tjilaut Eureun in South Java (leg. de Priester about 1933) measure 17 and 18mm.
Therefore the usual size of E. ocellata evidently decreases from the northwest to the southeast. The figures indicated above may be illustrated by the diagram.
Someone once said good things come in pairs. John Earle now believes this is true. While diving off Makua in 75 feet he collected not one, but two, Cypraea rashleighana. Ed deVaul did some fast trading and ended up with one of these fine specimens. Ed placed the living shell in his aquarium with his other live shells. The next day C. rashleighana was gone and he still hasn't found it. Also in Ed's well stocked aquarium is his first Conus spiceri collected the same day the sea shells were found.
Betsy Harrison collected the Cymatium vespacium pictured below [omitted here]. This shell, rare in Philippines, was collected in 80 feet off Waikiki. Betsy also collected another Conus acutangulus from about the same place.
Ed Womack, a fairly recent graduate diver, finally collected his first Cypraea sulcidentata. A nice shell from 70 feet also off Waikiki.
On Sand Island, Ray Fuhrmann found a fossil Conus nussatella. This is not surprising because quite a number of C. nussatella were collected (as fossils) during the dredging of the second entrance to Honolulu Harbor.
A specimen of Blasicrura coxeni (Cox, 1873) has been collected by Miss Toutol at Motalava in the Banks group (New Hebrides). The specimen measures 25.4mm in length, 14.6mm in width and has 15 labial and columellar teeth. The base is rather unusual in color: the columellar interstices are prominently orange-brown, while those on the labial lip are light orange, resembling in this feature Erronea ovum (Gmelin). The species has been previously reported from the New Guinea - Solomon I. area. In the published photograph an elliptical white ring is evident on the dorsum; this unfortunate reflection was caused by a new type of ring flash which was being tried out.
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