Sea Shells of Southern California

Book excerpt: This is a field guide to marine mollusks. Thisbook was created to fill, what is perceived to be, a void in the popular literature, namely an affordable reference guide to the sea shells found in the CalifornianMarine Molluscan Province. It is not intended as a comprehensive compendium ofthe shelled marine mollusks in the province, but rather is limited to those taxalikely to be encountered between the intertidal zone and depths ordinarilyaccessible by scuba diving. Some deeper water taxa are included because they areparticularly beautiful, well known or popular. Specifically excluded are thosespecies which we deemed to be micro shells, namely species where the average sizeis 7 mm or less; this necessarily excludes a great many families of marine mollusks.