page 4 April 1979 No. 251 NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES 
AKIBUMI TERAMACHI 
(November 5, 1898 - December 6, 1978) 
A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
Anthony D'Attilio 
San Diego Natural History Museum 
During a period of about ten years I corresponded with Mr. Teramachi 
and exchanged specimen shells with him. Prior to my relationship 
with Teramachi, shortly after World War II, I had begun to exchange 
correspondence and seashells with Seiichiro Kinoshita. He resided 
at Shirama, a small resort town on a tiny peninsula at the eastern 
side of the mouth of the Kii Channel. It was through Kinoshita that 
I obtained rare species such as Conus hirasei, Conus kinoshitae, 
Cypraea teramachii and Cypraea langfordi. Kinoshita eventually had 
to devote most of his time to a small business venture, and after 
five or six years our correspondence petered off, although I contin- 
ued exchanging material with Teramachi. 
As a result of this correspondence, some interesting facts were 
brought to my attention regarding the shell collecting activities 
in Tosa Bay and the adjacent Kii Channel, on the southeastern coast 
of Japan. These two areas have an essentially tropical biota, but 
are situated at about 34° north latitude, which normally would be 
well out of the tropics. The tropical character of these waters is 
due to the movement of the Kuroshio Current, flowing northward from 
the equatorial stream (similar to the Caribbean's Gulf Stream). 
Teramachi told me that he worked mostly with the fishermen at Tosa 
Bay, while Kinoshita worked with those at Kii Channel. The problem 
was to convince the fisher folk not to discard overboard the mollus- 
can shells obtained in the food fish trawling activities. It was 
an education process that took both of them about ten years to ac- 
complish. The fishing vessel captains were then ready and pleased 
to save the seashells and sell them on reaching shore where Terama- 
chi or Kinoshita were waiting at their respective localities. 
The widespread and persistent large-scale operations of commercial 
fishing vessels resulted in the appearance of large numbers of 
dredged shells on the market for collectors -- both for Japanese 
collectors and for sale abroad. What was even more exciting was 
the discovery of numerous species that proved new to science. As 
a result of this both Teramachi and Kinoshita were honored with 
many new species named for them by Dr. Kuroda, Dr. Habe, and other 
nalacologists in Japan. 
Through those years, especially between 1948 and 1960, I was in an 
advantageous puaition as a private U.S. collector to be the wren 
0 obtain many rare or uncommon species. Their prices seem r cu- 
lously low in retrospective comparison with the inflationary value 
of today's dollar. In addition, the comparatively small number of 
dealers did not increase radically until after 1960. 
In the October. 1958 issue of the VENUS, Japanese Journal of Mala- 
Cology (Vol. 20, ae 2, plt. 18), there appeared a se die a ithe og 
chi honoring him on his 61st birthday. He is dressed in ap nese 
fashion and stands amidst his collection of fine old eee p =n . 
Although he collected a wide variety of molluscan sit ee Hs ER 
Self his main passion was for the Volutidae. It was my piea 
have known him. 
