Diving the Kona Coast: snail

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Shell Game

Whilst scouring the reef for interesting things, I happened upon a small treasure. Lying in the sand and rubble at the base of a coral head was this perfect spiked helmet shell ( Casmaria erinaceus kalosmodix).

The shell was clean and perfectly intact - a rarity on the Big Island where a lot of the predators just crush shells and eat the contents. When one does find an intact shell, it is often inhabited by it's mollusk builder or a hermit crab. The inhabitant of this shell was probably eaten just hours before by a cone or Triton's trumpet snail.

Just to be clear with you, the shell is now in my collection. If I come across something this beautiful during a dive and I can have it without taking a life, then I consider it a gift from The Sea and I am grateful.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Triton's Trumpet

Aloha, everyone! I've decided to change the general format of my blogging as the "dive report" model was a little limiting and had to be posted somewhat quickly to be relevant. For now, I'm just going to pick a subject and show some photos of it with a little commentary.

Last week I was off work and did several dives. I managed to find the same Triton's Trumpet on two consecutive days and got lots of photo ops. The shot above is maybe one of my favorite underwater photos I've ever taken. I was just following the snail as it travelled over the bottom. When it crested this little coral "hill", I didn't expect it to stretch so far out of its shell. It resulted in a pretty unique perspective!

This was a medium-sized Triton's Trumpet and not one of the giants which are getting more and more scarce. It glided along the substrate smoothly and at a fairly good clip. Shortly after the above photo was taken, the snail tumbled off the coral and fell to the sand. It quickly righted itself and continued on its way.

The shell was beautiful and the newer portion was very clean and glossy. The large, muscular foot was mottled with brownish-red markings. The black and yellow striped projections are called tentacles and serve as sensory organs. At the base of each tentacle, on the lateral aspect, is a tiny black dot which is one of the creatures eyes.

The wonderful thing about a relatively slow-moving creature that is also aesthetically pleasing is that you can take tons of shots from all the angles you care to choose.

On the last day of my mini-vacation I found another Triton's Trumpet, this one in the process of devouring a Crown-of -Thorns sea star. The snail pins down the sea star and then drills into its skin and starts to dissolve the inner tissue so it can be ingested. There was some organic "fallout" from this process and the Saddle Wrasse in the background was enjoying a free meal.