I’ve been fascinated by sea, marine life, fishes and particularly shells, since I was a little boy.

I currently live near Lisbon, and also near the sea, for which I am absolutely passionate, just like many Portuguese navigators were many centuries ago.

I am a diver, aquarist reef keeper, and seashells lover and recently I became a cycads enthusiast too.

In spite of my hobbies, I’m an economist by profession (and recently almost retired from the profession), but natural history subjects, including conservation matters, as long as I can remember, were from the youngest my favorite interests.

The fascination with the aquatic world, diving and seashells collecting was born one day long ago, in a faraway place, in another continent, in a country of warm and bright colors, surreal and naïf for some and of eternal longing for me. I am speaking of Mozambique, where I lived for four years, twenty-five years ago. I was immediately in love with the odd tropical exoticism of seashells, with their exuberant shapes and bright colors, which I saw for sale in informal markets and later in many dives. Cones fascinated me the most by their endless variation of colors and patterns, in particular the group known as “tented mark cones”, like textile, and more specifically the pennaceus complex, that can be found in Mozambique as their profusion of subspecies and in many color and forms.

I started collecting cones, and Mozambican seashells in general, more than a quarter century years ago. My collection of Cones has grown ever since, both through purchase and exchanges, usually with shells that I collected myself on dive trips made to other places beyond Mozambique: The Cape Verde Islands, Angola, Martinique, Mexico (Caribbean side), Egypt (Red Sea), Maldives, Papua New Guinea, Oman, Nicaragua (Pacific and Atlantic Sea), Guinea Bissau, and also other less exotic locations in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea.

Nowadays I can offer a wide variety of seashells, particularly from the former Portuguese colonies: Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde Islands, Guinea Bissau and Brazil.

These shells are coming from my trip seashells, from exchanging and dealing in International Shell shows and on the internet, activities that I did at least in the last twenty-five years (In Shellauction, I’m under pennaceus nickname; https://www.shellauction.net/login.php).