This will be my third trip to Brazil, and I'm ready to go
back for more of this lovely country. Though shells are not plentiful, many
are different than those from the Caribbean and the beaches are simply beautiful.
We have also been able to purchase some great shells from divers, dealers, and
a tourist market.
There will be beachcombing, sand flat wading, and snorkeling, thus allowing us to visit varied habitats.
Ifyou are interested in this trip at all, send me a note so I will know if there is interest out there. (There's a lot of work in making these arrangements, and I need to know if it will be worth the effort! A Visa is required to visit Brazil, and you must have your plane ticket before the visa will be issued; so it's important to decide at least two months before the trip goes.
We'll visit the city of Salvador, in Bahia state.
Extensive sand flats yield many bivalves and crabbed specimens of
murex, spindle shells, and many others, plus some live gastropods.
Snorkeling here produces interesting murex, chitons, turridae, and other small shells.
Turrids and olivellas pop out of the sand at low tide, and if we're lucky we
can find some tiny sundials in the genus Heliacus.
At a craft market you can purchase shells (we've even gotten the huge Strombus goliath)
as well as souvenirs, and there are two divers to visit who sell shells.
We will also go near Recife, where coco palms soar from roadside
and beaches. There we'll wade and snorkel for helmets, volutes,
chanks, olives, naticas, etc. We'll do a night snorkel hoping for
volutes, and I hope to do a couple of days of dredging offshore.
