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Philippine shellcraft
The Mozambique area of the South-East African coast, roughly between 14° and 15° 20' South, is one of the best shelling
grounds in the Indian Province. If the recent check lists of this area, compared with those of some old-famous shell
paradises like Mauritius, do not appear overwhelmingly exciting, this is due to the fact that the area was never thoroughly
surveyed. But the present incomplete lists show a great number of rare end uncommon species, such as the long-lost Cymatium
ranzanii, the little-known Discors aeolica, the beautiful Conus bullatus, Conus pulchellus and nimbosus, Cypraea marginalis.
Mitra regina, Murex elongatus, and a host of others which grow to outstanding seize and beauty here, where five big end
several smaller bays spread 500 kilometers of rich shelling beach of varying character at the collector's feet.
...
The oldest inspected shell dumps contain a very small number of species, generally not more than two or three shallow water
bivalves like Anadara and Modiolus, with some Nerita or Patella now and then. But steadily, as the centuries pass, the number
of species in the shell dumps grows. More and more shells from deeper water are found; first more clams and cockles, oysters
and Pecten, then such Gastropods as Murex ramosus, Cypraea tigris and lots of medium-seized Strombus like gibberulus, decorus
and aurisdianae, until the present day number of 120 Gastropods and 70 Pelecypods is reached.
And now let us have a look at some of this year's or last year's shell dumps: Behold, there is the spire of a big Conus
figulinus among the rubble; there a Conus vexillum, and tulipa, smashed to bits. There are the charred remains of a Lambis
elongata, crushed Cypraea onyx adusta, fragments of Murex rota and the broken valves of a big, orange Spondylus. Having seen
the contents of the ancient shell dumps, would you conclude now that Lambis elongata or Conus tulipa are more frequent today
than they were five hundred years ago? Certainly not. Because these shell dumps don't represent a cross section through the
molluscan fauna of their respective time; they merely tell of the growing knowledge of a people who, strange to the sea and
its creatures, came to settle in this coastal region during the course of the great African tribal wanderings. They tell of
the individual preference and taste of the people who gathered these shells, and they tell of the growing population and,
consequently, growing scarcity of shells in the littoral zone.
One of the biggest thrills in shell collecting is finding a new species to add to your collection, especially if it is a
beautiful one.
So it was, the day I found my first live Cypraea gaskoini.
There were five of us in the shelling group that weekend: Joe Kern, Speedy Lopez, Jack Lind, Frankie Gomez and I. Being newly
arrived in Maui, Frankie, our captain guide and diving buddy, was going to show me a new collecting area for Cypraea.
Arriving at the boat launching-site we found that the weather was not exactly ideal. A strong trade wind had sprung up which
was churning the water, thus cutting down underwater visibility to about 15 feet. Frankie assured us that this was normal for
the area and would not interfere with the diving. With some misgivings I helped load the SCUBA equipment aboard and we
launched the boat.
With the motor on full throttle and the wind at our stern we soon reached the Cypraea grounds. I was still skeptical about
the dive. Here we were in a heavily loaded boat with a gale blowing and the water the consistency of weak tea. Worst of all,
I was cold. At any rate on the bottom it could be no worse than on top. With this thought in mind, I gathered my shelling
gear together and started to drop over the side. At this point Frankie called out to me that I would not need my coral
breaking-bar which normally is part of my shelling equipment. This struck me as odd, but I dropped the bar back in the boat
figuring that Frankie must have meant that the coral was loose on the bottom and could be turned over by hand.
How wrong I was! The bottom was all sand with an occasional underwater coral island cropping up out of the sand. "Oh, well,"
thought I, "there are other shells than Cypraea to look for." So I turned to work the sand for shell trails.
Caroline Is.:
Recently Mr. C. N. Cate presented me two walkeri from Moen Is. in the Truk Is. (coll. Schilder No. 17135 and 17136); they
formerly belonged to a series of fifteen similar shells dredged by R. Willis in the harbour in January 1962. These two shells
are "pellucid" like the dead glossy cowries dredged in Honolulu harbour, and exhibit a similar white chalk in the aperture:
there, the conditions of preservation in the harbour of Moen Is. must be about equal to those in Honolulu. The specimens
undoubtedly belong to walkeri (surabajensis) and not to bregeriana: the discovery of this far-off population of walkeri in
the central Caroline Is. is not very surprising, as other typically Malayan cowry species also spread to western Micronesia,
e.g. Erronea ovum Gmelin and E. onyx Linnaeus to Palau and Guam respectively.
Northern Melanesia:
Mrs. K. Matcott of Mooloolaba, Queensland informed me by letter in March 1963, that she possesses a "surabajensis" from New
Britain; as I have never examined the shell personally, the reliability of this indication seems to need confirmation.
Fiji:
Mr. W. O. Cernohorsky has quoted walkeri bregeriana from New Caledonia and Fiji, in his recently published Catalogue of
Living Cypraeidae (Frankfurt-Main 1963). In fact, since 1962 at least eight bregeriana have been collected in Fiji, all off
the West Coast (Nadi and Momi) facing towards the chief habitat of bregeriana, New Caledonia; especially Mr. A. Jennings has
dredged, at the islands Wading, Akuilau, and Namotu (20 miles off Nadi) several dead and living specimens, one oliviform
shell included of which I could examine the radula (Mr. Cernohorsky presented me a shell from Momi, coll. Schilder No. 17154,
which is 17 mm. long). All specimens show the typical orange base, often darker brown in the center of the inner lip, and the
peculiar white specks on base and margins, but they are much smaller (16 to 21 mm., mean 18 mm.) than typical bregeriana from
New Caledonia (20 to 33 mm., mean 25 mm.). These shells look like a population displaced far from its original habitat in New
Caledonia, where bregeriana is less rare, to an area with less favorable environments, as it is in the two dwarf Erosaria
ocellata Linnaeus from Tjilanat Eureun, South West Java widely separated from their Indian relations (see 1938, Prodrome, p.
138).
South East New Guinea:
If bregeriana could spread from New Caledonia to Fiji, it probably also could spread to North West: therefore I now do not
doubt its occurrence in Joanett Is., Louisiade Archipelago, from which locality Smith (1888, Journ. de Conchyl. 36:313) has
described three bregeriana of 21 to 22 mm.
The indications of habitat: Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Victoria, New Zealand, and Tahiti evidently are erroneous.
The appended map clearly shows the advancement of our knowledge concerning the distribution of Erronea walkeri since World
War II. It should encourage malacologists to further research.
Having a special interest in mollusks of the West African coastline, I have inquired as to why shells from that area are
often so difficult to obtain. The above pictures graphically show the reason.
The natives of the area seem to have a real passion for the use of sea shells as personal decorations, many collectors'
treasures being used as ornaments.
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philippine shellcraft
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