Mass sea snail death baffles Bangladesh
Date: 12-Apr-02
Country: BANGLADESH
Tourism officials said the snails were washing up along a wide stretch of Cox's Bazar beach on the Bay of Bengal.
"We are baffled by the finding that only one out of more than 300 species of sea snails are dying off along a particular stretch of the natural beach," Mohammad Zaher, a scientist with Cox's Bazar Sea Fish Research Institute, told Reuters yesterday.
An investigation was underway and the cause of the deaths was not known, he added.
Cox's Bazar, 420 km (262 miles) southeast of the capital Dhaka, is Bangladesh's main tourist resort but attracts only a few thousand foreign tourists each year because it is poorly maintained.
But residents said the mass snail death could be a boon for businessmen who make dolls and other handicraft items with the shells and sell them at high prices to tourists.