The trade for both collector categories is, however, also large, but has a morsel of merit in that the items of most value have a provenance. Such collectors like to think of themselves as ‘professional’ shell collectors and indeed their collections from the earliest days of travel have formed the basis for the cabinets of the world’s museums. Today, some shell collectors publish comprehensive reviews of their favourite genera or families in either conchological journals or shell club newsletters and catalogues, but many will also engage in the shell trade to earn money. Historically, some of malacology’s most famous and

revered names were, actually, little more than shell collectors.

Museum molluscan collections are amongst the largest of any taxon, save in some cases for the Arthropoda, www.selleckchem.com/products/Vincristine-Sulfate.html in many national institutions. The Mollusca collection in the Natural History Museum, London, for example, has nine million lots. In a real way the curators of such collections have Selumetinib concentration fostered the conchological hobby or profession, whichever way you want to look at it, by producing shell ‘guides’. There are thousands of such tomes, often lavishly illustrated, and they sell well. In some respects, such books are useful for the professional malacologist in that, if on a research trip to Australia or Patagonia, say, the local shell book is the first source of identification or guide to habitat for one’s object of study. Equally, such books stimulate the amateur

collector to pursue his or her hobby and so the whole trade and hobby, is reciprocally refreshed. But this story is not about the ethics of shell collecting. Probably, the hobby, like bird’s-egg collecting, will die out in time. The reality of the shell trade today is that as the conchological hobby has dried up, it has transformed itself into a vast industry, which is feeding a booming tourist trade with a thirst, albeit in ignorance of the truth, for that ‘authentic’ seaside souvenir. The ecological impact of this selleck chemicals llc trade must be gigantic. I mean, if C. lampas is now locally extirpated, what is the impact of that upon predatory, grazing or deposit-feeding, echinoderms, say? And, in turn, what is the impact of this loss down the food chain? The big gastropod predators I identified above are scientifically regarded as being ‘keystone’ species. And their populations are being battered. Moreover, nothing is being done about regulating the trade, save for the protection under CITES of a tiny few of the suggested 120,000 living species of molluscs. Hence, through inaction, shell collecting, a hobby that began life as a scientific blessing has become an environmental scourge. The frivolous Triton’s legacy.