I SHELL RETURN

On a biology Foreign Study Program in Jamaica in 1991, Jon Kohl '92 began a lesson that would last six years. As he snorkeled through the coral reefs at the Discovery Bay marine station, the flash of a solid pink object caught his attention. He dove and brought up a gleaming, pink queen conch shell. The queen struck him as a wonderful gift for his mom. So he brought it home and his mother set it gently on a shelf in the front foyer.

After graduation Kohl joined the Peace Corps and worked in the Costa Rican National Zoo, where he taught children that collecting natural objects can threaten wildlife populations and rob some species of their needed habitat. .And he d tick off examples of those objects: elephant tusks, rhino horns, birds nests, sea shells... "Wait..." Kohl paused one day. The conch shell he had collected was an excellent habitat:for crabs, "Darn tourist!" Last fall, as a graduate student at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Kohl gave the bad news to his mother: "Mom, I'm gonna throw your favorite shell back into the sea.' He mailed the shell to CeliaChen '78, teaching assistant in Dartmouth's biology Foreign Study Program, who returned it to its native Jamaican coral reef this winter. Now that Kohl has finished the lesson he began as an undergraduate, he hopes the biology department will give him a passing grade.

Kohl