NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No. 246 November 1978 Page 3 
tioned a red-footed booby, but I didn't see any birds except gulls. 
The reason for the rigidity in departure time became apparent when 
we went aground in the channel on the return voyage. It took the 
captain about twenty minutes of scooting around in the outboard to 
"find the water," making his soundings with a shovel handle. But 
neither the halt nor the lackluster collecting made the day less 
than pleasant and interesting. 
Milton Werner 
Another trip for marine-collecting was to Masonboro Island, a barrier 
beach off Wrightsville Beach, and facing generally eastward. Our 
group of fifteen was ferried to the island in two trips by a boat 
powered by two large outboard motors and captained by Dr. Gilbert 
Bane who on Wednesday evening had given us a delightful special pro- 
gran on "Sharks and Rays: Jaws Too!" The craft left Wrightsville 
Beach about 9:30 a.m. for a short ride up the inlet to a small beach 
on Masonboro Island. We were landed on a strip of sand which was 
bordered on three sides by marsh grasses and tide pools; the tide 
was still high but had started to recede. 
It was sunny and hot, with no breeze. Soon we started across the 
strip, wading much of the time, toward the ocean side of the island. 
On the grasses (Spartina sp.?) were Marsh Periwinkles, Littorina 
irrorata. There were thousands of them; I never imagined so many. 
Fach was well out of water on the grass stems. 
The ocean beach was lined with dunes perhaps fifteen feet high, and 
atop them was a breeze and a panoramic view back across the marshes 
and inlet. The ocean beach was wide and littered with fragments of 
shells familiar to us in New York and others we had previously en- 
countered only in Florida: Baby's Ear (Sinum pers ectivum), Sunray 
Venus (Macrocallista nimbosa), Cross-barred Venus (Chione cancellata), 
Kitten's Paw (Plicatula gibbosa), the Giant Cockle and the Prickly 
Cockle, and others, alongside the familiar Jingle and Clam and Oyster 
Shells and fragments of the Knobbed Whelk. A single valve of Merce- 
naria mercenaria seemed unusually heavy for its size so we broug 
Tt home to check it against a local specimen but found them the same. 
Investigating the activity in the water's edge, we found mole crabs 
scrabbling to get back into the sand as fast as the water washed them 
out. We had hoped to find living Donax here, but the only represen- 
tives on the beach (at least the section we examined) were a very few 
scattered, very beachworn, single valves. .«-- The beach sloped sharp- 
ly in the surf so, for safety's sake, there was no swimming. 
Turning back to the dunes, Dorothea Franzen found Succinea campestris 
in an unusual oceanside station. As we left the dunes we again di Ss- 
turbed some small birds (Least Terns?) which apparently were nesting 
nearby. Returning across the island, Dr. Franzen found more Succinea 
campestris, a small colony able to exist because of the slight eleva- 
ion of a tiny hammock. 
Ever since we had arrived on the island the tide had been dropping; 
the tide pools were now drained and the Littorina irrorata had de- 
Scended the grass stems to the level of the damp mud. There was an 
extremely low tide that afternoon (-1.0) exposing the beach and flats 
at the inlet side and revealing thousands of fiddler crabs, thousands 
of mud snails (Ilyanassa obsoleta) and thousands of small barnacles 
