Nautilus pearl

[pattye]

Amazing specimen, Steve! Fascinating-------------

 

[SteveM]

Spirit of Nautilus should be resting a little easier tonight?

My quest on this thread has put me in frequent contact with the world illuminati of Nautilus, a mollusk pivotal to our knowledge and understanding of the advent and evolution of complex life on earth.

Currently underway at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France is the 8th Annual International Symposium, Cephalopods Present and Past (ISCPP).

The stars are there, including University of Washington's Dr. Peter Ward and Dr. Neil Landman, Director of the American Natural History Museum. On the program was a discussion on the viability of Nautilus led by Dr. Landman to consider the need for CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) listing.

According to an attendee at the session held earlier today, the following data was provided:

?A fisheries study of an isolated Nautilus Macromphalus colony on Australia's Osprey Reef has counted a total of 2300 Nautilus, of which only 400 are female. Any further fishing would be fatal to the colony.

?In every known Nautilus habitat of the Philippines, the catch has been reduced 80% in the past five years.

?200,000 Nautilus shells are known to have entered the US just in the past five years. Given the slow maturation and low egg count of Nautilus, that figure alone would ensure extinction.

The Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC), sponsor of the conference, will be recommending CITES listing for Nautilus. This will internationally outlaw, in like manner to Tridacna, the fishing and trading of these shells for anything other than legitimate scientific purposes.

 

[Caitlin]

I am so glad you can pursue this. So many of us love getting to know Nautilus and this kind of detail fills out the picture.

You're saying "200,000" is a such a shock. Nautilus has always been my favorite shell shape. I've had one for 30 years and it always gets the place of honor in my special arrangements. But it looks like too many others wanted the physical object, as I did. I feel so bad for Nautilus. Its beauty has been its downfall, but now, maybe its pearls and science (and CITIES) are its redemption.

 

[SteveM]

Its beauty has been its downfall, but now, maybe its pearls and science (and CITIES) are its redemption.

Pearls (and some prodding by yours truly) have served to bring together disparate disciplines. I'm being told of pending discoveries in Nautilus biology that promise miraculous medical applications, as well as industrial.

After 500,000,000 years, a mollusk worth keeping around a while longer!

 

[SteveM]

It appears this thread has come to a pregnant pause?

Time to reprise the 'pregnant pause' enjoinder from early in the thread. On prior occasions, such call for timeout resulted from the need for more information. Now, there is an abundance of data and specimens including pearls, shells and blisters?all pending further study by a loosely-knit international team of biologists as curious about the mythology of Nautilus as they are excited by its potential for scientific discovery and application.

I am taking my own pause this weekend with Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Although our cephalopod friend has been proven in recent decades NOT to use buoyancy as its means of rising and falling in ocean depth, this persistent biological fallacy did quite obviously result in Verne's infamous naming of Captain Nemo's futuristic (still amazingly so, after 120 years!) vessel.

Pierre M. Aronnax, Assistant Professor, Paris Museum of Natural History (and fictional progenitor of Jacques Cousteau), is saved and taken on board the Nautilus. As Captain Nemo is showing him the ship for the first time, Aronnax comes to Nemo's extensive collection of art?and PEARLS:

Under elegant glass cases, fixed by copper rivets, were classed and labelled the most precious productions of the sea which had ever been presented to the eye of a naturalist. My delight as a professor may be conceived.

Apart, in separate compartments, were spread out chaplets of pearls of the greatest beauty, which reflected the electric light in little sparks of fire; pink pearls, torn from the pinna-marina of the Red Sea; green pearls, yellow, blue, and black pearls, the curious productions of the divers molluscs of every ocean, and certain mussels of the water-courses of the North; lastly, several specimens of inestimable value. Some of these pearls were larger than a pigeon?s egg, and were worth millions.

[Nemo] "You are examining my shells, Professor? Unquestionably they must be interesting to a naturalist; but for me they have a far greater charm, for I have collected them all, with my own hand, and there is not a sea on the face of the globe that has escaped my researches."

 

[lisa c]

browser

browser

I've been watching this, but I am clueless what to do on an admin level. I'm getting the pictures. I use Firefox. I'm wondering if its the browser.

Hi. Maybe it is the browser - I use Internet Explorer. Steve sent the pic directly to my email, and I still can't open it. I've been able to open other pics he's emailed though, so maybe it's a multi-faceted problem.

Maybe browser or something about the pic, or a corrupt program on my computer...we'll see, as you say. Again, thanks for all the help.

I have to take my computer down, and reload everything, I suppose. I've been putting it off. A doo-bad got shipped in to me w an attachment a while ago.

How about you Blaire?

 

[SteveM]

How frustrating, the files are formatted correctly per routine and graciously accepted by the P-G server?

Molluscus Abominabilis?

Spirit of Nautilus has shown itself to be benevolent.

 

[SteveM]

I also wonder if this sort of provocation for deposition of new shell material would be considered as much a blister as the coating of an intruder or other shell wall irritant?

Today I again visited Professor Peter Ward in his lab at University of Washington, specifically to bring our Nautilus shells with blister-type anomalies sent by the Indonesian source (LINK).

Four shells in our possession, all adult mollusks (both male and female), possess a substantial amount of excess shell material at the juncture of the final septum and shell wall where it overtakes the previous whorl. All specimens have precisely corresponding cracks in their outer shell surface.

The X-Ray shows that this 'blister' is of solid shell material and not an entombed predator (also note inset showing groove of the original crack on the shell surface). There is also residual fluid in the chambers, supporting the source's claim of recent capture (late June in this case).

In his decades of Nautilus research involving literally thousands of individual mollusks, Professor Ward has not come across this specific phenomenon, let alone seeing four examples at once. It seems that a source of Nautilus shell stress, be it predator or environmental, exists in Indonesian waters and not elsewhere.

Ward's UW Biology team will begin methodically stressing shells in their possession in an attempt to duplicate the conditions resulting in such specific damage.

Where this may lead, no one can tell?

 

[lisa c]

Aaaaah, nuts. No picture, redX.

All of Dave's pictures (Wild Mushrooms) came through just fine. What to do...

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Aaaaah, nuts. No picture, redX.

What Lisa said...

 

[SteveM]

How appropriate, if true, that it should be effisk (initiator of this thread) on the Kima thread today pointing out a color coding error that may be the cause of the image problems. Most recent X-Ray image is recoded, crossing fingers once again. If it works I guess I've got quite a weekend project to go back through prior posts.

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

How appropriate, if true, that it should be effisk (initiator of this thread) on the Kima thread today pointing out a color coding error that may be the cause of the image problems. Most recent X-Ray image is recoded, crossing fingers once again. If it works I guess I've got quite a weekend project to go back through prior posts.

I can see it now.

 

[Marianne]

How perfect the art of nature!

 

[lisa c]

Yea!!!!! I got it, I can see it!!!! Beautiful...

 

[GemGeek]

That photo was worth the wait! How exciting!!!!!!

 

[SteveM]

I recomposed the last image to add shots of the exterior cracks and the 'blister' (I guess there's no other term for it). Also went back through the thread and recoded all the incorrectly saved files, beginning with my first visit to Peter Ward's lab in early March.

Could that be a coincidence? As mentioned in that post, we attended a feeding of Ward's two captive Nautiluses that day. Perhaps thus acquainted, Spirit of Nautilus thought to have a little friendly fun with my program default settings?

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

These fractures appear as a result of sinking or tumbling. Perhaps following an attack and falling into the abyss and on to the substrate. Though some are big, they are still concentrated to a small area of the shell.

These blisters have the same margin as the septum, especially viewed from this xray image. It looks as though, the animal was ready to lay down the new septum when the injury occurred, thus abandoning it to focus on repairing the cracks.

Where all the samples outside of the last septum, or were some shells peeled away?

 

[Caitlin]

The x-ray is fantabulous! The pattern is so psychedelic! So your buddy Nautilus has a sense of humor? Let's hope she's not a prankster!

 

[SteveM]

These fractures appear as a result of sinking or tumbling. Perhaps following an attack and falling into the abyss and on to the substrate. Though some are big, they are still concentrated to a small area of the shell.

These blisters have the same margin as the septum, especially viewed from this xray image. It looks as though, the animal was ready to lay down the new septum when the injury occurred, thus abandoning it to focus on repairing the cracks.

Where all the samples outside of the last septum, or were some shells peeled away?

All outside the final septum, in the final body chamber of the mature mollusk. The cracks are all symmetrically curved, probably coincident with the shell growth lines.

Ward feels that these huge shells may represent a new species, since science has focused primarily on Nautilus populations in Micronesia, Philippines and Melanesia. In any case, the angle of the aperture changes as the mollusk grows and creates new septa, and the final rotation may expose a leading shell edge weakness. The cracks appear where the mollusk would bump into a hard surface during horizontal locomotion. Vertical movement of a healthy Nautilus would not be rapid enough to explain such damage.

Peter's TA suggested 'crash tests' and I said I looked forward to future publication in Consumer Reports?

All kidding aside, this phenomenon falls right into line with Ward's latest research on storage and periodic, discretionary secretion of calcium, unique to Nautilus, that holds promise for application to osteoporosis and other biomineral disorders in humans. He has subsequently EMailed saying that these cracks are potentially 'important.'

So we're involved in the latest Nautilus research on two fronts: pearl vortices, pearl rotation and pearl/shell microstructure with Checa/Carwright in Granada, and shell architecture and repair with Ward here in Seattle.

As Blaire says, it's pretty exciting!

 

[Caitlin]

Nautilus tentacles into everything.