My first memories of shells come from the time I lived in Edmonton,
Alberta, living in a condo right on the west edge of town (now Canada's
biggest mall lies to the west!). I remember telling other kids that the
snails (they were Lymnaea stagnalis) living in the water-filled ruts
left in the mud of the wasteland between the condo and the farm fields
were "poison". I also remember from about this time finding very heavy
white shells, somewhat resembling smooth Nucella lamellosa, at Pembina
River (anyone familiar with these fossils please contact me). I was
when we moved from Edmonton to Victoria.
However for me it really began when I was 7 1/2 years old, in late 1967, our first year in the
coastal city of mild climate. An uncle, visiting from San Francisco, took me to the Undersea Gardens, which was then moored in the Oak Bay Marina. He bought me a mesh bag of shells... and I was hooked. I still have most of those shells. The next year my grandmother sent me a box of shells from SF, which included Tibia fusus, Epitonium scalare and Cypraea spadicea. I dreamed of growing up to be a malacologist; R. Tucker Abbott was my hero.
For me collecting has always been a solitary thing; there was nobody else with my interest. At every opportunity I would collect, and made sure to use the taxonomic names of the shells I found, keeping the locality data. I began to take live specimens when I was perhaps 11, and kept the opercs when present.
Memories of a rich spot just north of Botany Bay, where my mother, sister and I camped, of an Opalia-littered beach northwest of Sombrio and the Ogden Point breakwater are particularly treasured.
Three weeks spent schnorchelling from the Tradewinds Hotel, Suva in Dec 73/Jan 74 gave my first taste of collecting in the tropics. Observing mudskippers, various small and large morays, a lionfish (Pterois) and a couple of octopuses were icing on the cake. Note to visitors to Fiji: visit the cementworks sandheaps in Lami, near that hotel on the west edge of Suva. It's dredged from Suva Bay and packed with good shells.
After our move to Blenhein, New Zealand I began to build build my NZ collection. I remained solo and amassed a good selection of the shells of the northern end of the South Island.
In 1979 I moved south to rainy cool HILLY Dunedin, where I spent 2 years at Otago University supposedly studying, drinking far too much beer and having fun with my motorcycles (in the rain) and battered old VW van. I soon realized that the subject of biology wasn't going to allow me to pass and changed my major to geology; I did very well in paleontology but crystallography and math shot me down. I flunked out and did some laboring jobs and worked for 2 years in a factory building garbage-quality whiteware.
Eventually I decided that this job was getting me depressed I quit, and after 6 months on the dole the Labor Department phoned and asked if I'd like a 6-month job preparing a fgossil dolphin. I jumped at this and met Ewan Fordyce, who had started his lectureship a year after I left uni. ASfter this was another 6 months, then another job on other fossil "dolphins", yet another 6 months on the dole and a grant for wan from the National Geographic Society began a roll that lasted until about 1998 or so, when funding dropped off and spots of unemployment reappeared. However I'm still working in the paleo lab today.