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Shellcraft
The north shore of Oahu is a difficult area to collect during most of the year. But a day of collecting in this area can
easily be one of the most rewarding in number of species collected. Also it is an area where rare shells are frequently
found.
Imagine yourself plodding along the beach at Haleiwa Bay. You have already collected six species of Conus, five species of
Mitra, a 5-inch Cypraea tigris, and then you find a lovely specimen of Murex pele washed up on the beach, dead of course, but
a very nice specimen. That's the way it sometimes goes along the north shore.
The other side of the picture (tradition has it that there must be two sides) is not quite so perfect. In fact it could be
completely the opposite. For after a long drive across the Island the surf might be up, as it frequently is during trade wind
weather, preventing any shelling, at least for a few days.
Occasionally excellent shelling occurs right after a really big surf pounds the north shore. The largest waves occur during
the winter months and are the result of tremendous winter storms far out at sea. The storm-propagated [storm-generated] waves
travel across the Pacific and, when approaching the shoaling water around Oahu, begin to pile up and travel even faster until
they strike the rocky shores with a thunderous crash. The onrushing water picks up bits of coral, sand, gravel, and shells
(occasionally) casting them high up on the beach. Some of the shells do not follow the rushing backwash into the sea but
stay, high and dry, on the shore to be added to some lucky person's collection.
During periods of quiet water, skin and SCUBA divers find good collecting off Sunset Beach, including such species as
Charonia tritonis, Conus abbreviatus, flavidus, pennaceus, and rattus have been collected. Also Cypraea gaskoini, mauritiana,
and rashleighana, as well as Oliva sandwichensis, Strombus hawaiensis and maculatus. Charonia tritonis is usually found under
the overhang of a ledge or in a cave. Probably this is why they are seldom washed ashore. I have also collected them from
inside huge, hollow coral heads, living in peace with lobsters and moray eels. Some species of cones found on the north shore
live under small coral rubble or coral heads, buried in the small amount of silty sand that usually manages to stay put under
the coral, while other species lie exposed on the hard bottom. Shore collectors have found Cypraea cicercula, semiplota,
nucleus, and one Strombus hawaiensis as a reward for that early morning trek to the beach when they managed to be the first
collectors to arrive on the scene. In the coral boulders along shore fossil Cypraea ostergaardi have been collected.
The large cowrie Umbilia hesitata (Iredale) is rather frequent in deep waters around the Bass Strait, i.e., in northern
Tasmania and in Victoria, reaching the most southern area of New South Wales from Twofold Bay to Montagu Island. Farther
north in New South Wales the species becomes much rarer, and the specimens are distinctly smaller. So far as I know, only
five shells have been collected in the northern area, viz. at Ulladulla (coll. Schilder, ex coll. W. O. Cernohorsky), Nowra
(the smallest known shells of 54 and 56 mm: coll. Schilder, ex coll. W. Krause), Wollongong (Angas 1867), and Port Stephens
(Beddome 1898: coll. J. R. Le Brockton Tomlin).
Recently, Mr. S. R. Shadlow (Mermaid Beach, Qld.) has sent me, for examination, a live shell dredged from 96 fathoms off
Point Lookout (Stradbroke Island, which belongs to Queensland). The shell figured above (figs. 3-5) is full grown, 70 mm
long, white, with very pale fulvous dorsal spots mostly arranged along the purplish-grey dorsal line, and chestnut lateral
spots. The extremities are suffused dorsally with rich greyish brown.
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