
NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No.263  ~June-J uly-Aug. 1980 Page 5 
THE 1978 AMELA EXPEDITION 10 THE SOLOMON ISLANDS 
AN INFORMAL REPORT 
By Philip W. Faulconer 
"Conus gloriamaris is really not rare; I tra 
a ee 3 p them as I would lob- 
sters, but recently fishermen have been stealing my traps just to get 
the hundreds of feet of nylon line." Brian Baile rofession div 
er and salvor of sunken ships, was showing us a wiictentie tivectnen 
cone he had just taken from a trap near Yandina Plantation in the 
Russell Island Group, toward the end of our three weeks of diving 
and collecting in the Solomons, in July of this year (1978). 
Over a year ago, Billee Dilworth and Twila Bratcher had started or- 
ganizing the American Melanesian Expedition, in which twelve members 
of the San Diego Shell Club would travel on the 100 ton, 79 foot 
motor vessel CORALITA, visiting jungle-covered volcanic "high islands" 
and palm-crowned coral “low islands", The CORALITA's captain, Wally 
Muller of Yeppoon, Queensland, has conducted such voyages for the 
last twenty years, ranging from the Great Barrier Reef up to New 
Guinea and down to New Caledonia. All of our group had previously 
sought shells in remote parts of the world, and easily fell into the 
routine of life on board, exploring and collecting, then cleaning 
and identifying our acquisitions. 
We flew from Los Angeles to Fiji, thence over the New Hebrides to 
Honiara (Guadalcanal), capital of the newly independent Solomons, 
where the CORALITA awaited us in front of the Mendana Hotel. Our 
bulky sacks of heavy equipment for diving and collecting, far over- 
weight by former airline standards, were accepted under the new rules 
by which baggage is measured rather than weighed. In Nadi, Fiji, we 
were greatly assisted by the passenger agent who remembered Billee 
and Twila from the previous Fiji trip, and quickly transferred our 
baggage from Pan American to the smaller Air Pacific plane for the 
final thousand mile leg of our outward journey. 
For the next three weeks we lived on board, traveling mostly at night 
and using the daylight hours to snorkel and dive, often diving again 
at night in the warm, clear tropical water. We slept in comfortable 
staterooms, enjoyed hot fresh-water showers, and feasted each day on 
the inspired creations of Denise Muller, who continually produced 
wonders from her tiny galley. 
The captain also won our admiration by skillful navigation from one 
coral-studded island group to the next, always raising or dropping 
the anchor by daylight, then conning his boat visually through the 
tricky reefs. Some nights we travelled as many as fifteen hours, a 
distance over a hundred miles, as between southern Santa Isabel Is- 
land and Roncador Reef, arriving with pinpoint precision just as the 
first light illuminated the shipwreck which sits high on the other- 
wise invisible coral reef. 
i dreds of 
The Solomon Islands consist of ten large islands and hun 
smaller ones, scattered along a double line northwest to southeast, 
over some 250,000 square miles of the southeastern Pacific Pge8R 
The population of about 200,000 is largely concentrated on e big 
island of Malaita (50,000), and Guadalcanal, wpece auene twa rare 
islanders have flocked to the new capital, Honiara. fetrié willages, 
other people are scattered in tiny family groups or 
