Chang has more than 100,000 shell specimens in his collection, including common nautiluses (Nautilus pompilius); Teramachi's cowries (Cypraea teramachii) and Joyce's cowries (Cypraea joycae), which can be worth as much as a car; and Rumphius' slit shells (Entemnotrochus rumphii), which appeared on the planet earlier than the dinosaurs. He also keeps more than 30 different species of mollusks in aquariums. They are so precious to him that he often sleeps next to the tanks. He set his personal record at the Ilan Green Expo, when he slept beside them for two months.

To find how Chang's fate became interconnected with mollusks, one has to go back in time and consider the actions of his father, Chang Fu-chuan.

Accidental encounter

In the 1950s and 1960s, when the fishing industry in Nanfang-ao was booming, Chang Fu-chuan had a propeller repair business. Back then local children only had one plaything: the ocean. When Chang Yi-hsien got out of school he would go to Neipei Harbor to fish, or climb on a rubber raft with his brother and paddle all the way to Cape Toufu in order to go diving.

"Back then, if you looked down into the sea, you could see colorful tropical fish, and the beaches had countless large shells, right there for the taking." When he speaks about the big sea of his youth, Chang Yi-hsien's face has a dreamy look.

But the family had inherited a bunch of Chang's paternal grandfather's debts, and life was hard. Eleven years ago, the 17-year-old graduated from vocational high school and started to work with his father repairing fishing boats. One day, when the father and son were working on a boat, a fisherman who knew them well pulled a Rumphius' slit shell out of a plastic bag, and asked Chang Fu-chuang, who had more contacts than he did, to bring it to Taipei and try to sell it. Recalling that first time he saw a Rumphius' slit shell, Chang Yi-hsien remembers that it was very smelly--so smelly that he tried various cleansers to rid his hands of the stench before finally removing it with several applications of toothpaste.

In the 1960s, the Taiwan Provincial Museum (located in what is now 228 Memorial Park) had held an exhibit of Rumphius' slit shells that created quite a stir. Consequently, fishermen realized that these shells would fetch a high price. A few days later Chang Fu-chuan went to a shell dealer in Taipei and timidly asked NT$40,000 for the shell. To his surprise, the dealer immediately agreed. It was only then that Chang Fu-chuan truly realized how valuable shells could be, and he started to tell local fishermen that if they pulled shells out of their nets they could bring them to him for trades.

At the time Taiwan didn't have any boats that specialized in catching mollusks. Shells that got pulled up with fish were "happy accidents," says Chang Yi-hsien. As far as fishermen were concerned, mollusks didn't have any economic value, and most of those that got inadvertently caught in nets were just tossed back into the sea. Because of the loss of pressure, most of those thrown back wouldn't survive.

When the Changs, father and son, started dealing in shells, they didn't understand the market. Not knowing which shells to pick, they took everything: "A sack of shells for a case of whiskey." In that way the Chang family would acquire more than 10,000 shells. After they gained more expertise, some precious shells they acquired allowed them to pay off several million NT dollars of debt."Shells are truly the savior of the Chang family!" declares Chang Yi-hsien.

The sea's heartbeat

As a nation of many islands and a place where English is widely spoken, the Philippines is a center of the global shell trade. "But so many of its most precious shells were pulled up by Taiwanese fishing boats." Two reasons account for that fact: The first is that Ilan's beautiful coast (including Kuishan Island) provides a variety of ocean ecologies that support numerous species of mollusks. The second is that Taiwan's fishing fleet has long been among the world's most technologically advanced. Back 20 or 30 years ago Taiwanese fishermen knew how to trawl and drop cages along the ocean floor at greater depths than the boats of other countries. Consequently, they picked up precious shells from the ocean floor at a higher rate.

When international fishing rights weren't so clearly delineated, Taiwan's deep-sea boats went around the world and brought back many precious deep-sea shells. Like Nanfang-ao, the long-range fishing fleet of Pingtung County's Tungkang earned quite a sum of foreign exchange on the shell trade. The two harbors--one in the north and one in the south--both made names for themselves in the world of shells.

"Basically, the value of shells varies based on how common or rare they are," says Chang. A single species of mollusk can live in different areas of the ocean, where their shells may bear different patterns. For instance, for a cowrie of the species Cypraea langfordi caught off Taiwan, the price might be NT$10,000, but for those caught off the coast of California, which are much less common, the price might be NT$60,000.

Having worked with fishermen for many years, Chang Yi-hsien's brain has already created a mental map of the world's precious shells. But today, with the fishing industry in decline, Chang doesn't dare let it see the light of day.

"There are already a few Taiwanese fishermen who have cast aside fishing to focus on bringing up shells," he explains. "If I made this map public, these mollusks would be over-hunted, and it would damage the market for shells." For the public and private good, Chang can only keep that precious information to himself.

Collector urchin (Tripneustes gratilla) / On the deep ocean floor off Taiwan live many extremely beautiful mollusks. Many living examples can be viewed in the aquariums at Chang's Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition.

Building a shell museum

Initially, Chang Yi-hsien was merely a shell dealer. But after performing his military service, he came home and began to organize the nearly 40 boxes of shells stored in the family home. Every time he opened a box to discoverer some marvelous find, he would sigh, thinking what a pity it was: "Taiwan is known as 'Formosa,' meaning beautiful isle, but these treasures of the sea are crammed in boxes, never seeing the light of day." This sparked his dream to open a shell museum. The whole Chang family was behind him, and they split up duties: his father and older brother would be responsible for working at the boat repair shop, and his mother would cook at her fresh seafood stand in the harbor. Their work would free Yi-hsien to throw himself into collecting and dealing shells and to plan the shell museum.

Once he started sketching out his long-range vision for the museum, Chang Yi-hsien no longer resold all of the precious shells that came into his possession. Instead he saved the most beautiful and excellently shaped samples for his museum collection. He owns the largest and most flawless Joyce's cowrie shell in the world. Though a collector offered him US$15,000 for it, he refused to sell.

In 2003 when Nanfang-ao celebrated its Mackerel Day, Chang exhibited his shells for the first time ever at the invitation of the local fishermen's association. The great number of shells not only surprised the attendees but also attracted the attention of the county government. After discussing with Chang, county staff decided that the second Ilan Green Expo would include a Hall of Shells housing Chang's collection.

For Chang, who had long wanted to build a home for his precious shells, the county government's offer was a dream come true. He told them that he didn't need to be paid but hoped that he could acquire the tanks and sanitation systems used in the expo for a shell museum in his hometown so that visitors to Nanfang-ao would be able to do more than just eat seafood; they could also enjoy these shells and advance their understanding of marine culture.

Alive, alive, oh!

Yet, after planning for a year, Chang began to feel that while presenting information about mollusks and the cultural uses of shells was all well and good, the shells in his collection--when it came right down to it--were just dead specimens. Moving, living specimens would definitely be better able to bring people into mollusks' world and would foster better understanding of their ecology. Visitors would no longer simply regard shells as pretty decorative items.

That line of thinking also garnered the support of the county government. The problem was that apart from those raising clams and the like for the food market, no one in the fishing village had ever raised live mollusks, and even the professional aquariums lacked experience rearing them. Despite a lack of equipment and knowledge, Chang wasn't willing to give up, and he groped his way forward, building a two-meter-long aquarium in his family's boat repair shop. He rose to an impossible challenge.

"The whole process was a horrendous mess!" laughs Chang as he recalls the state of affairs. There was so much that mystified him at first. He wasn't clear about which mollusks had passed away and mistakenly put several that were already dead into the tank with the others. When he put all of the mollusks into the same tank, they ended up killing each other. Not knowing what each species ate, he would just throw in a bunch of food. All of these actions led to polluted water, so that he had to clean the tank once every two days. Furthermore, the aeration and filtration system that he put together wasn't reliable and its outflow pipe was too small, so that about every three days the aquarium would flood.

He learned by trial and error and also had advice from Chen Chia-yung, a doctoral candidate in aquaculture from National Taiwan Ocean University who had joined the county government. The two of them gradually figured out what to feed different species. A mollusk pulled from the sea must first be depressurized, examined in quarantine, and only put into an aquarium when its condition becomes stable. It's best to feed different species of mollusks separately. That's the only way to determine what each species likes to eat.

"For instance, Triton's trumpet (Charonia tritonis) likes to eat starfish, whereas the bullmouth helmet (Cypraecassis rufa, a.k.a. the cameo shell) eats only sea urchins," Chang explains. "Rock shells (family Muricidae) like to eat other kinds of mollusks, and cone shells (family Conidae) emit a poison when they encounter enemies. If you don't clean up the leftover food, they'll think it's an enemy and will keep emitting poison. They might even poison themselves!" When describing the favorite foods of his pet mollusks, Chang recalls that he invested a lot of time before discovering that mollusks are omnivores, eating both animal and plant matter. So that his dear mollusks can feast to their hearts content, Chang also spends a lot of energy going down to the ocean every week to net sea urchins, starfish, and seaweed by himself.

Life and death of the slit shells

At the 2005 Ilan Green Expo, Rumphius' slit shells were, as expected, big hits, and after the exhibition finished, Chang brought all the equipment home and turned the family house into a shell museum. In July of that year the Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition formally opened. The first floor is devoted to living mollusks, and the stars are Rumphius' slit shells and common nautiluses. The second floor holds a shell specimen area, a shell information exhibit, and a fossil display area.

Unlike Taiwan's shell collectors, Chang's museum is mostly concerned with research into living mollusks and how to care for them, especially the king of the mollusks: Rumphius' slit shell. To buy live slit shells from fishermen, he borrowed NT$1 million from the local fishermen's association, and every time a fisherman catches one and notifies Chang by radio, Chang reimburses him for turning back to port and not working. The idea is to give the hauled-up mollusks a better chance of surviving.

Chang has already kept more than 30 of them. He can successfully keep them alive in this artificial environment. At international mollusk conferences, this fact always causes mollusk lovers and marine biologists to marvel.

On the night of September 28, 2005, an 18-centimeter Rumphius' slit shell laid over 10,000 gold-colored eggs. The process took about four hours, and afterwards the mollusk turned a brighter red. "I was a father!" Chang happily recalls. This was the first time that one had laid eggs in captivity, and on a list of the ten biggest local shell news events of the year it came in at number one. Unfortunately, there was only one Rumphius' slit shell in that tank, so the eggs had no chance of getting fertilized.

Even more frustrating for him was that this Rumphius' slit shell died unexpectedly when scared by a firecracker that was lit during the combined elections later that year. It had lived in captivity for 265 days, not far short of the record of one year set by a team of Japanese specialists. Consequently, Chang decided to sell one 20-centimeter Rumphius' slit shell and use the proceeds to build the others a soundproof room that seems as peaceful as the sea.

Saving the precious shells

Looming in the background is another reason why Chang has gone to great lengths to provide for his precious mollusks: "It used to be that Nanfang-ao-based boats would pull up ten Rumphius' slit shells in a year, but last year they only pulled up two!" He explains that improved fishing techniques in conjunction with the bottom trawling practiced by Chinese fishing boats means that in recent years even young mollusks are being caught. The habitat of rare mollusks such as Rumphius' slit shell is being damaged. He can't help but feel very anxious about it.

"I'll save as many as I can!" says Chang. He is now working with academic institutions toward propagating them in captivity, hoping that the Rumphius' slit shells will produce future generations and that he will repay the Chang family's debt of gratitude to the species.

From feeding and caring for living mollusks, to categorizing his collection of shells, to designing exhibits to explain the cultural importance of shells, Chang Yi-hsien handles all the work at the museum. He is the mollusks' master and their biggest fan.

An expensive shell game

The Chang family may have grown wealthy from the shell trade, but in truth when Chang Yi-hsien began planning for his museum, he didn't realize that his scariest test was just beginning.

In order to turn their home into an exhibition space, the Changs borrowed machinery to knock down walls. They did everything themselves--from opening up the space, to spackling the walls, to decorating.

The Green Expo's wooden shelves and water tank system were designed for short-term use. Once he moved them home, Chang discovered that the wood had already started to mildew and rot, so he built new metal stands for the aquariums. And the pump was of poor quality and often broke down, so he just went ahead and replaced it. It didn't take long for Chang, this young museum director, to use up all his savings.

An even bigger burden was electricity: Deep-sea mollusks are best suited to live in waters of a temperature of 20 oC. Hence, Rumphius' slit shells, common nautiluses, and cowries all require their own chillers. This necessitated another NT$200,000-plus outlay. And then there's the monthly NT$25,000 electricity bill.

In order to conserve electricity, Chang, who lives on the third floor of the museum building, is reluctant to turn on his own air conditioning. When he simply can't stand the heat, he goes down to the first floor and camps out beside the mollusk tanks.

Our human forerunners treasured shells and used them as currency. On that basis, 28-year-old Chang Yi-hsien ought to be considered one of the richest people in Taiwan. Yet, when you add everything up, with no public funding, he's spent nearly NT$10 million over the last five years to take care of his guests from the sea. As he's gone from the black to the red, incurring debts of NT$3 million, his girlfriend of six years dares not marry him, and even his father, who had originally been very supportive, is now beginning to suggest that he apply the brakes and return to simply being a shell dealer.

"Right now I'm in an anxious state wondering whether this is the right time to suspend museum operations," says Chang, his voice full of struggle and frustration. Acting as director at the museum, while at the same time working toward a degree in marine environmental informatics at National Taiwan Ocean University, Chang is awaiting the result of a recruitment test he took with the fishermen's association in November. If he passes, Chang will become a nine-to-five office worker, and the museum will only offer tours on vacation days by appointment. If he can't get work with the fishermen's association, then he'll look for other employment. Either way, the museum will come to the end of an era.

"It's not that I've given up, but right now I'm using my energy and money to cultivate my skills," says Chang, as he bends down quietly to observe the Rumphius' slit shells breathing. Chang insists that finding some beautiful place along the coast where he can breed vigorous Rumphius' slit shells and return them to the sea will forever be his dream.

Sea anemone / On the deep ocean floor off Taiwan live many extremely beautiful mollusks. Many living examples can be viewed in the aquariums at Chang's Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition.

The Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition

Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Address: No. 15, Huashan 3rd Lane, Nanhsing Village, Suao Township, Ilan County

Tel.: (03) 995-1420

Tickets: Full price: NT$100. Half price: NT$50. Nanfang-ao museum ticket combo: NT$150 for admittance to the Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition, the CCCB Coral Museum and the Bihansyuan Pheasants Park.

Common nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) / On the deep ocean floor off Taiwan live many extremely beautiful mollusks. Many living examples can be viewed in the aquariums at Chang's Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition.

The Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition

Apart from his collection of 100,000 shells, Chang Yi-hsien is also a master of keeping living mollusks. The biggest and reddest shell pictured, a Rumphius' slit shell, was originally his museum's star attraction. It has since been sold to the National Taiwan Museum.

Entemnotrochus salmiana / On the deep ocean floor off Taiwan live many extremely beautiful mollusks. Many living examples can be viewed in the aquariums at Chang's Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition.

Nanfang-ao, located in the northeast corner of Taiwan, is more than just a harbor famous for its deep-sea boats. This area of coastline also supports important habitats for rare mollusks.

In order to feed his living mollusks, Chang Yi-hsien often goes down to the beach himself to gather special food for his precious charges. Otherwise, he purchases the food from fishermen.

Hermit crab / On the deep ocean floor off Taiwan live many extremely beautiful mollusks. Many living examples can be viewed in the aquariums at Chang's Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition.

Ramose murex (Chicoreus ramosus) / On the deep ocean floor off Taiwan live many extremely beautiful mollusks. Many living examples can be viewed in the aquariums at Chang's Nanfang-ao Shell Exhibition.

After viewing the museum's abundant collection of shells and personally filling a bottle with shells as a keepsake of your visit, the sound of sea's ebb and flow lingers in your mind.