[Mikeyy]

Just as an example of the difference between anecdotal stories and facts. The area around Muscatine Iowa has always been an important shell area. The stories about pearling in that area say it was basically fished out around the turn of the century. Then the button factories sprung up and there were hundreds of thousands of pounds of shells produced from the same area. This area continued to provide a steady quantity of shells until the early eighties. It was then that the big rush on Washboard and 3 ridge shell really kicked in to gear. This same area that had been harvested for over a century was producing over 100 containers of shells per year. Now they shut down harvest of washboard shell a few years back. They used the threat of the Zebra mussel to shut down shell harvest. But I can tell you for a fact that there is still hundreds of thousands of pounds of shell in the U.S. that can be harvested without damaging the shell reproduction. And this is just a section of river 16 miles long. There are thousands of miles of rivers that have never been opened for commercial harvest. There are only a few shells needed for the nuclei business. And none of them are endangered. You will read things like "Special Concern" or the like to discribe a particular shells situation. But that is code for we don't know. We haven't run a study. We think it could be bad but we don't know. I am all for protecting any species that is in danger of extinction or even over fishing. But I would love to see any study that has actual numbers that are varifiable. OK rant over