A beautiful conid famed for its unforgettable pattern consisting of numerous parallel spiral lines, the “Hirase’s Cone” ranges from southern Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines. A carnivorous and predatory gastropod feeding on polychaete worms, it inhabits hard bottoms of rather deep water around -100~250m.

The first specimen came from the famous collection of Yoichiro Hirase, its namesake, but it was unfortunately destroyed during World War II. Originally a very scarce species due to its deep habitat, but advances in tangle net in the Philippines have brought up numerous fine specimens in recent years and rendered it merely uncommon. Chinese trawlers are also bringing up specimens from the East China Sea in recent years.

A little-varied species and usually instantly recognisable by its characteristic pattern, the number of chocolate lines vary quite a lot among individuals. Background colouration generally white, with a violet hue increasing posteriorly towards the shoulder. Very prone to growth scars that are particularly noticable on this species as they interrupt the pattern, it is rather difficult to find a perfect specimen. A large number of shells are meticulously ‘doctored’ in the Philippines by applying resin to the scars and then carefully painting over the resin. Typical shell length arond 60mm, extremely large specimens are known to exceed 90mm.

It has been placed in genera such as Rhizoconus (original description), Kioconus, Continuconus, and Klemaeconus; but the most recent revision of Conidae by Puillandre et al. (2015) reduced the number of full genera in Conidae to four, consequently its current placement is in genus Conus and subgenus Klemaeconus. – adapted from Chong Chen’s post

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