But this time you heave a sigh of relief when the descending-Hne looms 

 into view. With your precious Spondylus safely retrieved you begin the 

 ascent. Slowly you come up, breathing all the while. The top at last! 

 You pass your Spondylus to some reaching hand, some one else lifts off the 

 helmet, and feeling like a man who has just returned to earth from a visit 

 on Mars you commence to babble about all the strange things you saw 

 below. 



SCUBA DIVING FOR SHELLS IN HAWAII 



By Elizabeth Harrison 



The moment we slip beneath the surface of the sea in SCUBA gear 

 we enter a new and utterly fascinating world. The basic gear is the same 

 for everyone: face mask, snorkel, fins, compressed air tank, and regulator. 

 After that, the variations in equipment are as numerous as there are divers. 



A pry bar to turn rocks or break up coral heads is usually carried; a 

 steel crowbar driven into a wooden pick handle gives good leverage and is 

 fairly inexpensive. A collecting bag, of course; a bag fastened about the 

 waist or looped about the wrist is popular, or a sock (no holes, please!) is 

 sometimes sewed to the bathing suit. Unless we dive from a boat a float 

 is used, usually an inner tube to which a line and an anchor are fastened. 

 This last may be anything heavy enough to reach the bottom and stay 

 there. 



A "look box" or glass-bottomed bucket i^ carried along when diving 

 from a boat; we search for a likely spot by peering through it at the 

 bottom. Once a good area is located, over goes the anchor, on goes the 

 gear and over the side we go. From the beach the technique is slightly 

 different; there we don our gear on shore, plop down on our inner tube 

 and snorkel along the surface until a good spot is found. The float anchor 

 is dropped, regulator substituted for surface breathing snorkel and down we 

 go along the line to the bottom, be it 15 to 50 feet or more. 



It is standard practice to work the area around the anchor, then carry 

 it to the next spot. One feels more secure knowing that the float is above. 

 In sand patches we fan for sand dwellers with gloved hands (did we men- 

 tion gloves?) or, if conditions are right, follow the moUusk's tracks. When 

 working on a submerged reef the pry bar comes into use to turn loose rocks, 

 pry up attached ones or break apart tho^e too large to turn. All types of 

 terrain must be searched for each shell has its preferred habitat. 



One works at a leisurely pace so as to make optimum use of the 

 precious air, swimming from one coral head to the next with slow and easy 

 kicks of the "flippers." 



It takes practice to find shells with SCUBA gear, but once learned 

 there is no other experience in the world to equal this sport. It is a thrill 

 to find any shell, be it common Cypraea isahello clothed in its coal black 

 mantle or more-than-common Conus pulicarius fanned from the sand. To 



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