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Coral
What happened from that point on is not too clear. I distinctly remember indicating to Betsy that our decompression
time/depth limit had expired and we would have to leave. The time in between the find and that moment is a complete blank. We
both agreed later that neither of us had been so shaken underwater before. The effect was worse than seeing a shark. At least
I had remembered what happened in such cases! After the dive, while sitting in the boat, an examination of the shells
revealed the fabulous beauty of the Strombs. They far exceeded the coloration and loveliness of the fresh fragments that had
been found in earlier diving. The shells were a myrid of color, ranging from the pink-purple of the protoconch, through the
russet rays on the lip, to the blue-brown of the back. The very active and strong animal was cream-colored with round light
brown spots on the foot and a brown proboscis covered with small, white spots. A pair of utterly fantastic almost human-like
eyes gave the mollusk a look of intelligence and personality. Frankly, the enormity of the find left us a bit breathless. We
had truly found the Philippine Strombus in his natural environment!
Vayssière (1910, Journ. Conchyl., 58:302, 307, pl. 13, Figs. 1-3) described a C. gaskoini fischeri from Eastern Melanesia,
and the holotype from Upolu, Samoa (L: 13mm, W: 61% of L.) was illustrated in fig. 3 on plate 13; figures 1 and 2 depict a
shell from the Dautzenberg collection. Schilder & Schilder (1952, Ph. Dautzenberg's coll. Cypraeidae), point out, that the
Dautzenberg shell was erroneously placed in the same box with specimens of C. gaskoini from Philippines, bearing a shell
label "Cote de Haiku, Maui"; the authors suggest that this particular label may have prompted Vayssière to designate "Île
Maurice" (Mauritius), as type-locality, and the authors further note, that 2 paratypes of C. gaskoini fischeri were worn
Erosaria labrolineata (Gaskoin). The only records of C. gaskoini fischeri appear to be from Lifu, Loyalty Islands (Leg.
Goubin, coll. Dautzenberg), the holotype from Upolu, Samoa (coll. Vayssière), and a worn specimen from unknown locality in
coll. Dautzenberg. Dr. Burgess (in litt.) informed me that the late D. Thaanum was supposed to have collected a small
specimen of C. gaskoini in Fiji in 1940, but no further details were available; if this specimen can be located in the
Thaanum collection at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, the present specimen would be the sixth specimen of C. gaskoini
from Melanesia. The records of fischeri by F.A. Schilder from New Britain (1933, Zool. Anz., 102:300, fig. 10, and 1937,
119:187) are in fact Cribraria catholicorum Schilder & Schilder, 1938.
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coral
Shell
Bracelets
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