A fish-eating cone snail of Indo-Pacific reef and rubble, with a broad thin shell mottled in brown and white.
A broad, thin-shelled cone to about 15 cm, cream to white with a fine net of brown markings. The shoulder is rounded rather than sharply angled, and the aperture runs almost the whole length of the shell, which is the useful field character.
It hunts fish at night on sand and rubble and under coral slabs, and by day it is usually buried or hidden. It is found through the tropical Indo-Pacific.
It fires a hollow radular tooth like a harpoon, from the narrow end, and it can reach round the shell in any direction. There is no way to hold one safely. The rule for every cone shell is that they are not picked up, and this is the species that rule exists for.
This entry carries no occurrence record. The animal is listed because it is a hazard a diver should be able to look up, and its range is given above, but none of the destinations this site holds data for is inside that range. A record will be added when there is one to add rather than an estimate to invent.