We had one rather large spot on the north side of the Redondo sub- 

 marine canyon that we always found interesting and productive. We called 

 it simply the Foram spot, because the Foraminifera were so very abundant 

 that after washing we were literally picking our mollusks from a mass of 

 Foraminifera. For some reason this locality was especially good for collect- 

 ing some rare genera of the Turridae. As a matter of fact, there were a 

 number of things from here that we couldn't name and sent on to Dr. 

 Bartsch who was working on the group. 



We were fortunate in having the deep submarine canyon running off 

 Redondo Beach. One of the easiest ways to be sure of getting a good haul 

 was to check the chart and run off the edge of the canyon into possibly 

 300 fathoms of water, drop the dredge down as deep as we wished but short 

 of the bottom, then simply start the boat and run for the bank which would 

 probably not be over 50 fathoms. In dragging the dredge up the side of 

 the canyon we invariably got a fine haul BUT with one very serious draw- 

 back. We tried to keep very accurate bathymetric ranges on all of our 

 material; obviously in any such maneuver as this we would have no idea 

 whether we picked up a certain shell at 100 or 50 fathoms. 



Some of the toughest dredging I ever tackled was on a shale bed off 

 Monterey, California. The bottom here, running from the beach off Del 

 Monte down to around 40 fathoms, is shale and rock. The result is that 

 a dredge is hardly down before it is caught. To attempt to free it by 

 running back and forth over it or anything else is simply an exasp>eration. 

 We found that the only thing to do to collect in real quantity was to tear 

 up strips of the shale bottom and bring it up, rocks and all. I recall one 

 of our first trips up there; we were met by 3 local shell enthusiasts and they 

 all had dredges of their own — 10 in all — each the result of the fond and 

 motherly care of the owner and representing every type known to dredgers. 

 We took along 7 dredges of our own. We worked there 3 days, and at the 

 end of that time the only remaining dredge had the heavy hardware cloth 

 sides simply cut to ribbons. We also had over 300 fine living Pterynotus 

 carpenteri, several Hemitonia bella, and countless Ocenebras, Calliostomas, 

 and many other things that kept us busy for weeks afterwards. We aver- 

 aged about 400 pounds of good dredgings which is not bad in any 

 dredgers' club. 



The difficulty of getting some of the things we always wanted badly 

 is still a puzzle to us. For example, off Redondo Beach we would bring in 

 hauls composed of hundreds of recently dead valves of our quite rare 

 Pecten diegensis, adult shells averaging 4 to 5 inches. In with these we 

 would bring up quite commonly smaller living specimens averaging the size 

 of a dollar; rarely indeed did we get a living big one. We concluded that 

 this mollusk is simply active enough to swim out of the way of the dredge. 



At certain seasons of the year we had another problem to contend 

 with in the heavy growth of marine algae. Our favorite spot for dredging 

 always with success was what we called the gravel bed. This ran from 

 about 25 fathoms on out to possibly 40 fathoms, and the bottom was simply 



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