He was a person amongst mollusks.
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, the chevalier de Lamarck, was a French naturalist with an notable identify. His fanciful designation was an indication of the occasions, so to simplify, he was often simply referred to as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Mr. Lamarck turned identified for his most important work, Système des animaux sans vertèbres. In 1801, this was probably the most complete e-book on invertebrates to this point and it made him the premier authority on animals with out backbones.
Lacking a backbone was not an issue for the various species he described. One of those spineless wonders that he’s credited with figuring out and naming was plicatula gibbose. Known colloquially because the Atlantic kitten or cat paw, this species is a small and easy shell, a bivalve that one would discover for its petite dimension and cute, feline feet-like form.
Chappaquiddicker Nancy Slate didn’t miss this mini-marvel, sharing that she discovered a kitten paw shell at Chappy Point. Kitten paws are marine pelecypods, the category that features bivalves resembling clams, oysters and scallops.
She knew that this species is native to the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts and didn’t belong in our northern waters. Mentioning that her mom, like so many people, loved shell gathering on her travels, she surmised that this shell was introduced from some place else and deposited by a backbone-owning human on this seaside distant from its authentic home.
It should be human nature to take and depart pure objects. The final time this species of shell was discovered on a Vineyard seaside it was found with a gaggle of different nonnative shells, possible dumped by a collector disposing of their cache.
That earlier account of misplaced and located shells collected — or recollected — by a neighborhood scientist was documented by me in 2018. It acquired a remark two years later from a Californian who admitted that she “understands why the shells were put back into the ocean, or at least on the beach.” She additional explains, “I have done something similar when lightening my load of rocks and shells. You feel that’s the respectful thing to do with them. I sometimes feel a bit sheepish if they were not all from the place where I ‘put them back.’ But the sentiment is, well, you can’t throw away agates and shells…. And you imagine the delight of someone else finding them. So you pack them up and back they go, to have another day in the ocean where they kind of belong. I often wondered about the casual geologist or biologist here being surprised by the slight incongruity of my returns.”
Her sentiments ring true to many. At Felix Neck, we have now even acquired bins of shells despatched by the mail from afar with a request to return them to Vineyard waters. We unfold the native ones and preserve the unique ones — simply in order to not shock an unsuspecting scientist!
Kitten paws and different shells would have nice tales of journey and journey to share if they might. And it’s possible this Chappy specimen has many extra voyages forward. Because of its sturdy nature, kitten paws and different marine mollusks might persist for generations in a jar of shells on a shelf, or be thrown again in to the ocean for an additional journey with the tides.
The discovery of the southern shell offers an opportunity to ponder to energy of nature to enchant us, the proclivity of individuals to gather and maintain onto all these treasures and the creativeness of a future finder being simply as enchanted.
Suzan Bellincampi is Islands director for Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown and the Nantucket Wildlife Sanctuaries. She can also be the creator of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.
