#muricidae

Botany Bay near Bare Island, Sydney, NSW

Siratus beauii - 135 mm, Guadeloupe

This is a genus of marine gastropod mollusks in the family Muricidae and is indigenous to the Pacific Coast of California. These specimens have an interesting history. When Pier 174 burned in Los Angeles Harbor in December of 1967, these shells attached to the wooden pilings. On a silt bottom, they fed on mussels. They were collected with SCUBA at 35′ in 1991. It normally lives in shallow protected water and it is not a common shell. Like other rock shells, it is carnivorous, using its file-like radula (from the Latin meaning “scraper”) to drill through shells of other kinds of mollusks.

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