A large spiralled shell that hunts sea stars and sea cucumbers, out on the reef at night.
Shell to about 37 cm. A large conical shell with a long sharply pointed spire and a wide flaring aperture. The outside is mottled creamy white to yellow with crescent-shaped brown markings. The inside of the aperture is white, and the area beside the opening is orange-pink with white folds. The living animal is boldly patterned cream and brown.
The Pacific triton is the shell most often confused with it, and geography settles it: that species is not in the Atlantic, and it is larger, to about 50 cm, with a longer and less strongly shouldered spire.
It is a predator of echinoderms — the Atlantic equivalent of the Pacific triton that eats crown-of-thorns starfish. It lives on sand and rubble beside reef between about 0.3 and 110 m, and is largely nocturnal, buried by day.
It is heavily collected for the shell trade and large adults are now uncommon on accessible reef in Florida and the Keys. It is often sold and written up as a subspecies of the Pacific triton; that usage is out of date and it is treated as a full species.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.