Still Life: Shells

Ah, using my super psychic sense, I can tell you that they were in a room half-way up a skyscraper!

Bob

Another beautiful photo, G/S. I love this blog for all the variety you bring to us. I shipped you a CONUS MARYLANDICUS from the Longan Lakes Quarry located near Naples, FL today. The shell came from the lower Pleistocene Bermont formation. You can look at briefing material relating to that formation on the Web. The over-collecting of modern species of tropical shells is even more serious because Cones carry a mix of toxins in their poison gland that have therapeutic potential. You may be able to locate the fairly recent NY TIMES article on the promise of CONUS toxins that may in part never be realized as yet more tropical species of this genus are driven toward extinction by the international seashell market and general habitat deterioration and destruction. I would prefer to see these and other mollusks alive in habitat feeding, reproducing and contributing to the local ecological mix. The market should be focused on shells that are already deceased and weathered a bit, although that effect is probably easy to fake. I have been to Sanibel Island, FL and seen its diverse shell fauna at least from the specimens I have collected dead from beach drift. Even before controls were put on live collecting, I refused to be part of the live-shell collecting frenzy. Our neighbors at the Colony Resort gathered and killed dozens of beautiful live mollusks for their shells when I was there as a kid in 1966, having hired a contractor to take them out to some flats rich with pectens and other shelled invertebrates. I thought it was disgusting to see all the carnage laid out to dry on their balcony. OK, enough rant for today.