A large flared pink-lipped snail of seagrass and sand, moving in hops on a hooked foot rather than gliding. Fished heavily enough across the region to be listed and regulated.
Shell to about 30 cm, heavy, with a flared lip that turns bright pink inside in adults and blunt spines along the spire. Juveniles have no flare at all, which matters: the flare is what tells you the animal is mature, and it is the basis of most size regulations.
It does not glide the way most snails do. It hooks a claw-shaped operculum into the sand and hops, dragging the shell forward, and a conch crossing a sand flat leaves a distinctive track. It grazes algae on seagrass and sand and lives for decades. It has been fished across the region for centuries and is now regulated almost everywhere and banned in some places; empty shells piled on a sand flat are a fishery, not a natural accumulation. The living animal is worth waiting for: given a minute of stillness it will put out two long eye stalks, each with a well-developed eye on the end, and look back at you.
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.