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Back on board the boat, with wet suits stripped off and a cup of hot coffee spreading a glow inside us, we examine the catch.
Out came the Gorgonia. Tenderly, piece by piece, it is laid on the deck. I find I have four different colours - red, pink,
yellow, and orange. To think that these colours come from the relatively cold environment at the bottom of the harbour seemed
incredible to me. Before this I had always connected colour with warm tropical waters. But here within my reach, almost at my
front door, was the living, intricately grown beauty of another world. As I placed the coral back in the bag I saw a small
object hanging by a thread of sticky substance that slowly stretched to the deck. I placed my hand beneath it and discovered
my first little "gem-of-the-sea," a gorgonian shell. Feverishly I searched through my bag and found nine of these beautiful
little shells representing three species.
The five months of snorkel and scuba training each weekend with the B.S.A.C. of Sydney, the knowledge gained, tests passed,
the new-found friends who had given their time to make a diver out of me --- here was my reward. As a scuba shell collector
I'd found my first real prize. Since that day my life has slowly but surely centered around the sea and all its marine
inhabitants. Although I have found many strange and wonderful specimens, none means more to me than those little Primovula
which started me on the way to the happiest two years of my life.
The species Cypraea humphreysi was described and illustrated by Gray in 1825 (Zool. Journ., 1:489, pl. 12, fig. 1, and pl. ?,
fig. 1), and his description is as follows: "Shell ovate oblong, milk-white, with three very broad fulvous bands, making the
shell appear fulvous brown, with four narrow bluish white bands one of which is round the concavity of the spire and another
round the anterior extremity, scattered with numerous irregularly shaped fulvous brown spots, the spire concave, partly
covered; the base flat, orange yellow, spotted, the margins slightly thickened, scarcely extended, and sharply margined on
the outer lip and sides of the front; extremity orange yellow, scattered with brown specks, the aperture rather narrow. Teeth
rather large, blunt, pale; the columella flat, smooth, in the hind part plaited, and rather concave in the front. Axis 9/10,
diam. 5/10 of an inch."
The specimen described and illustrated by Gray, came from Mrs. Mawe's collection and was also figured by Wood (1828, Ind.
Test., Suppl. pl. 3, fig. 12) as Cypraea nivea (non Röding, 1798, nec Gray, 1825). Gray's description and illustration of
this species are so detailed that it could not apply to any other known Cypraea species, and his species is undoubtedly the
C. humphreysi of authors, as depicted in Sowerby, Kiener, Reeve, Sowerby, Tryon and others.
Palmadusta lutea yaloka was described as a subspecies of P. lutea (Gmelin, 1791) by Steadman & Cotton (1943, Rec. Sth. Aust.
Mus., 7(4):322) from only 2 specimens found at the Nadroga reef, Viti Levu. The authors did not state in what morphological
characters the new subspecies was supposed to differ from P. lutea humphreysi, but remarked that their specimens did not
agree with the description given for humphreysi. Their figured holotype (1946, Rec. Sth. Aust. Mus., 8(3), pl. 10, figs. 7-9)
does not show the "whitish zonal bands separated by light brown" as mentioned in their description.
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