Tiger Cowrie in the Night. Or was it in the Morning's Light?

     For the last ten days we have been living on the right bank of the Columbia River, in that nouveau riche village of Camas.  Once a paper making town, Camas has been transformed by its proximity to burgeoning Portland combined with the tax incentive of living in Washington.  They still make a little paper in Camas, but the economy is 99% white collar.

Weatern Tiger Swallowtail, courtesy Greg Dean

    I had been hoping to find  some  butterflies. in the Pacific Northwest.  In my previous life as a bird watcher I seldom saw a butterfly.  I had hoped that this was because I wasn't really focused on seeing butterflies.  In search of Lepidoptera, we have gone to several parks and gardens, including an enterprise ten miles north of Vancouver called Naturescape.

  I had high hopes for Naturescape, which boasts butterfly and bird gardens.  In actuality it turned out to be about three acres of trees and cultivated wildflowers plopped in the middle of a cow pasture.  There were a variety of attractive plants that, if there were more of them, might attract birds and butterflies.  It could be that this project is aimed at selling these plants, but there was no one there to sell them and no obvious source of stock, as one might expect to find in a nursery.  It was a lovely day and we enjoyed an hour in the garden, recording our first black cap chickadee for the trip.

   We have remained vigilant and recorded a fleeting Western Tiger Swallowtail in the parking lot of Mccuddy's Marina on Hayden Island.. 

   We are hoping that the butterflies will appear with the migratory birds in two weeks.

Money Cowrie with extended mantle and siphon

   While we have been here, spending the majority of time with our children and their progeny, our house exchangers,  Gail and Martin DeLuke,  have been minding the fort at Casa Ono and snorkeling in our stead.  Two days ago, while on a baby sitting assignment, I was greeted with a text from Gail, which included pictures of a cone shell hermit crab, a Christmas Tree Worm and a bristle worm.  But hold the presses!  Her fourth picture was of a cowrie that I could not readily identify.  As far as I could tell, it was almost black with a bit of lighter mottling and a myriad of white spots. 

   This resulted in a flurry of trans-Pacific text messages which ceased when my cell phone died.  As Gail was, at this point in her evening,  was equally interested in ono tacos, mango margaritas and marine biology, the best information would come later.  Suffice it to say, it can be frustrating for us scientific types to deal with normal people, no matter how well intended.

   It wasn't until the following morning, back at Chateau DeLuke,  that I transferred her picture to the

Reticulated Cowrie, Kailua Pier 2012

computer.  Once we had a better look, it was apparent that the cowrie was covered by a dark mantle which was projecting a panoply of short white papillae..  

   Suffice it to say, I was dumbfounded.  Fifteen years ago I captured a money cowrie and kept it overnight in our aquarium at Alii Villas.  An hour or so after dark, it extended a white mantle with amazing fimbriated papillae. That was the one and only time that I have seen a cowrie with its mantle extended.

   (It was with this picture, that you see here, that I seduced the winsome Marta De Maintenon,PhD who has been our go to invertebrate zoologist lo these many years.  You have to admit, its quite a picture, especially when you consider that our aquarium was a large mayonnaise jar and we were shooting through the plastic.) 

   The key concept in all the above is "after dark".  As far as I knew, cowries always retracted their mantle before first light.  I had not known that our friends swam at night, so as soon as it became 0630 in the land of the swaying palm trees I gave my correspondent a call.  Her field notes, now liberated from the intoxicating influence of ono tacos, were this:  The cowrie was seen at about 0730 at Kahalu'u in roughly four feet of water.  It was huge...she thought six inches.  At this point I recalled an scrub nurse telling a critical surgeon, "But doctor, the boys always told me this was six inches." 

Tiger Cowry with extended mantle, Kahalu'u 2021 Gail DeLuke,

    I gave poor Gail a lecture on how you have to be careful with measurements underwater, stating the the reticulated cowrie was probably the biggest at Kahalu'u,  reaching a maximum size  just under four inches.

   With this new information in hand, I went back to the computer.  Gail had forwarded a video of a Tiger Cowrie extending its mantle.  I found it, as well, and had to admit that it looked very much like what she had photographed.  Here is a video with lots of great information about Tiger Cowries along with a look at the mantle. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PO2HxtQWRk

   Tiger Cowries grow to 6 inches in Hawaii and are among the world's largest.  Due to their large size, they have been prized for arts and crafts.  That is one of the reasons they are now uncommon.  If you are lucky enough to see one of these behemoths, please do not take it home.   And if you happen to see Gail DeLuke, tell her I'm sorry I doubted her.

   I do not have this species on my list.  We will check with Kathleen Clark to see if it is on her list for Kahalu'u.  While Wikipedia says that this animal lives below 30 feet, other internet sources put it at deeper than 10 feet.  With Ms. DeLuke's excellent picture in hand I believe we can reduce that further to four feet.  

    When we return to the Land of the Coqui Frogs we will definitely take a few swims just after sunrise in hopes of seeing a cowrie with its mantle extended. In the meantime, where the heck are all the butterflies?

 jeff 

A follow up note. 

    Kathleen Clark, who does regular surveys of Kahalu'u. reports that she sees large Tiger Cowries occasionally.  The last was in August of 2021.  On the other hand, Bob Hillis, who spent a heck of a lot of time both in deep and shallow water, before moving to Utah a few years ago, never saw a Tiger Cowrie in shallow water.  He did see them on walls in places like City of Refuge. You have to trust me...in his prime Sr. Hillis was an astute and indefatigible observer of the shallows.  

   I feel a bit like Carl Linnaeus, whos sat in his chair at Uppsala University, sending out his young proteges around the world to find new plants and animals to add to his taxonomic lists.

    On the other hand, who would you rather be,  Linnaeus or Peter Artedi ?  Those of you who are students of the blog, or possibly the science of ichthyology, will recall that Artedi was a colleague of Linnaeus, who was strictly a botanist. Linnaeus never left Scandinavia, while Artedi and others traveled widely discovering and collecting.  Artedi was the prime collector of marine animals.  He died while collaborating with a famous Dutch collector in Amsterdam, falling into a canal on his way home and drowning. 

    Following his death, his observations were co-published with Linnaeus as  in "Ichthyologia sive opera omnia de piscibus ..."  However, when it came time to publish the seminal work,  Sistema Naturae,  old Carl shamelessly took credit for his friend's work. There are no fish attrbuted to Peter Artedi.  Quid pudor est.

    So here's to Peter Atedi, Bob Hillis, Gail DeLuke and Kathleen Clark (for I am but a hmble scribe.)  Enjoy the toast, but try not to fall off a bridge on the way home.

jeff