Helmets

These are helmets, members of the family Cassidae, from two different parts of the world. The larger one on the right comes from Jamaica, from Blue Mahoe to be precise - see earlier post here. This was towards the end of our stay there, so it would have been 1975.

I spotted it one evening in the shallows close to where the two game fishing boats were tied up, and waded round to collect it.

It's about 160mm long. I think it's Cassis tuberosa, a species which is common in the shallow waters of the Western Atlantic and Caribbean - link here.

As with all shells, there was an animal inside, a snail, which had to be removed without damaging the shell. The easiest way to do this was to bury the shell in shallow, sandy earth and leave the ants to do the job.

The smaller shell - I think it's Cassis madagascariensis, link here - is about 110mm long, much more robustly built, and comes from the coast near Mombasa. I have no recollection of where I collected it - I may have bought it - but I do know that it's travelled with me for most of my life, having spent a fair share of its time in the little brown suitcase.

Times have changed. These days, with tropical reefs being stripped of anything that will sell to the tourist, I would have left those two old shells in peace, as we did with this beauty which we found grazing in the sea grass on a reef at Ras Kutani, south of Dar-es-Salaam, in 2011. We might as well have taken it....

....as we weren't the only people on the reef that morning. The man seen in this picture, who had obviously been watching us, hurried over as soon as we left the shell and picked it up.

Pictures of the huge range of species in the Cassidae family can be seen here.