VOL.37 NO.1 APRIL 2007 - British Shell Collectors' Club

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PALLIDULA Page 4 SHELL COLLECTING IN HALKIDIKI, GREECE by Carl and Craig Ruscoe In May 2006 my brother, Craig and I spent 2 weeks in Halkidiki, Greece collecting shells. In a recent edition of the Pallidula I read a very good article on collecting shells in the Athens area written by Linda Young. There was a very extensive list of species found, including many interesting micro shells. This inspired us to try out Greece for ourselves. We planned to meet up with a friend and fellow collector, Kyriakos, who lives in Thesaloniki. To our frustration we found out only after booking that he was doing his national service for 12 months and we would have to go it alone. We spent a very hard 2 weeks collecting. We walked for 150km and drove 1500km in 2 weeks and in total we sampled 27 beaches; there was no respite. The hard work paid off and we collected some lovely shells. I would like to tell you about our trip. The Growler, our friend, came on time to take us to the airport. Our flight took only 3 hours but we had to wait for an hour to collect our luggage because a case had got stuck somewhere and had jammed the whole system. Not knowing this, Craig and I offered to help with the unloading; our offer was declined. After an unnecessarily long coach journey, we arrived at our apartment at 4am. Carl with the worlds biggest pineapple !!! We were up at 8am the next morning eager to start collecting. After a quick visit to the local supermarket we started collecting on a short-turfed calcareous slope just a stone’s throw away from the apartments. We found about 8 interesting species of land snails and made our way to the local beach about half a mile away. At first the beach here looked devoid of shells. The beach mostly consisted of coarse sand with a couple of lines of shingle. We knew that we would have to walk to the inter-tidal rocks at the end of the bay, even here though it was a struggle to find shells. I searched in the fine grit with my nose a few millimetres from the floor and found some beautiful bright orange specimens of Truncatella subcylindrica. I was delighted. I had never seen this species with any real colour before. Craig made himself useful searching on the rocks for living Molluscs. A good variety of gastropods could be found on the rocks, mostly complete with resident hermit crab. Amongst Craig’s finds were Clanculus cruciatus, Monodonta articulata and Epitonium lamellosum. We then climbed up in to the pine forest overlooking the beach in an attempt to find more land snails. As I expected, there were no snails living in the forest. The greedy pines had drunk all the water and eaten all the nutrients from the soil. On our way back to the apartments we spotted locusts, huge centipedes and a large snake close to where we had collected that morning. We could have been fried! We set off on Wednesday quite pleased with our first day’s catch. We proceeded down to the local beach and headed south this time. Amongst more rocks we found many micro shells including Turrids, Rissoids and Nassarius. We walked on for about 1km and found our first real shell sand. I scraped up a bag full to process later. In the shell sand there was a good variety of micros and more than 50 specimens of a beautiful Cyclope species with a lovely speckled pattern, a rather unusual member of the family Nassariidae. We made our way back to the Themelis apartments after walking up and down all day, and Craig, whose lifestyle leaves a lot to be desired, nearly passed out with exhaustion! We had a lot of cleaning to do that evening but I still managed to put some more time into collecting land snails and found some Ceciloides, a blind, subterranean snail rarely seen alive! We then had our evening meal at a nice restaurant called the Bella Venezia. The food here is very good value and the service is excellent. The added bonus was that customers staying at the Themelis were given 10% discount cards for the Bella Venezia. Craig thought he could get away with giving them 10 cards and no money, it just didn’t wash! We had to be at reception early the next morning to pick up our hire car. While we were waiting, during a considerable delay, I searched for more land snails on the local slope. I managed to find 12
PALLIDULA Page 5 specimens of Truncatella cylindrica. This is a tiny member of the family Vertiginidae and quite uncommon. At less than 2mm long it is quite difficult to find. I put my eyes back in their sockets and went to reception where the Europcar driver had arrived. The driver insisted that we leave a deposit of 350 Euros. Craig almost exploded, insisting that no deposit was agreed when booking. The driver called for reinforcements and after 15 minutes of negotiations as they seemed to pluck figures out of the air we came to a compromise “100 Euros, you pay me now”. We finally got on the road in our strange sinistral car. We stopped at Kallithea to change money and then drove on South down the East coast of the peninsula. We stopped at a place called Solina. The beach here was not bad. Craig found a beautiful patterned specimen of Glycymeris insubrica and I found a small internal shell of a Sea Hare, Aplysia, the first we had collected. Musculus senhousia could be found here also in very good numbers. On a rock behind the beach here we also found a small population of Clausillids, yet unnamed and close by we found the very rare Garden snail: Helix aspersa! We made our way back to Fourka after only half a day of collecting as our morning had been wasted by the hire car company; nevertheless it was a good day. On our fifth day in Halkidiki we drove to one of the ports to look for fresh shells in lobster pots and on trawlers. After a horrendous drive, negotiating our way through the city traffic we arrived at Kalamaria, the main port, just south of Thesaloniki and made our way down to the jetty. Unfortunately there were no lobster pots here, only fishermen’s nets piled up on the jetty. The nets produced some interesting shells including Bolinus brandaris and Hexaplex trunculus and some nice bivalves including Corbula gibba and one species of Anadara. Generally though the port was a little disappointing. We then made our way south to a place called Nea Michaniona and pulled up by the jetty. The jetty produced very little but a few hundred yards down the beach here we found lots of larger bivalves including Venus verrucosus, Callista chione and Glycymeris bimaculata. I imagine these shells would have been discarded by trawlers out at sea somewhere and washed up here. Delighted with our finds we drove off to look for a nearby beach with good shell grit, as we had been given some tiny Gastropod shells by a collector in Thessaloniki called Kyriakos and they were collected at Nea Michaniona. We pulled up by a lovely big stretch of sand and I thought it would probably not be too good for shells as there were no rocks to be seen. To our surprise it was the best beach for bivalves that we had ever seen. We collected countless bivalves here in great condition including Tellina, Gastrana, Venerupis, Ruditapes, Donax, Anomia, Notirus, Cardita and Arca. Some nice gastropods could be found here also including the common Wentletrap, Epitonium clathrus in good numbers and with the best patterning we had ever seen. Collecting along the strand line at Nea Michaniona The following morning we had some serious cleaning to do as many of the bivalves collected at Nea Michaniona still had fruit inside. Just before lunch we set off north and stopped just north of Nea Moudania at Nea Plagia. The beach here produced very little so we carried on north. Our next stop was a port called Kalikatrea. At Kalikatrea there was very little on the beach and Craig was getting ready to cut and run. I insisted we walked up to the rocks near the jetty. Here were many nice smaller shells including Cyclope, Nassarius, Tricolia, Rissoids, Turrids and Truncatella. It always pays to make that bit of extra effort. We then drove to Nea Michaniona as we were so successful here the previous day. We arrived mid afternoon and the sea seemed to be much calmer this time. We started searching at the same point as we had started the previous day and very little could be found here. By the time we had walked 200 yards or so the hoards of bivalves started to appear again and we filled our pots. It is quite common to find shell dumps moving along the beach in this way, mainly depending on the wind speed and direction. The species found here were much the same as we had found the previous day with one or two interesting additions. We found several specimens of Spisula and Bornia sebetia, a small translucent wedge shaped bivalve. By 4pm the sea became noticeably rougher and more larger bivalves were washed up fresh including some large
Page 1 and 2: VOL.37 • NO.1 • APRIL 2007
Page 3: PALLIDULA Page 3 A PROPHETIC PAINTI
Page 7 and 8: PALLIDULA Page 7 and we proceeded t
Page 9 and 10: PALLIDULA Page 9 There is a new pla
Page 11 and 12: PALLIDULA Page 11 Assiminea grayana
Page 13 and 14: PALLIDULA Page 13 5. Limpets, Tereb
Page 15 and 16: PALLIDULA Page 15 E. onyx succincta

VOL.37 NO.1 APRIL 2007 - British Shell Collectors' Club

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