NOAA Fisheries Image Gallery

Goodnight Moon Snail

Picture by: Florian Graner, Sealife Productions Picture taken on: June 2nd, 2010

Tags: snail night moon

Lewis' Moon snails, like this one, are common visitors to sandy dives sites, where they may be observed moving along the bottom using millions of tiny cilia on the bottom of it's expansive foot. Ranging from Vancouver Island to Baja, California at depths from Intertidal to 600’, this voracious predator is the bane of oyster-growers and clam beds. Growing to a shell diameter of 5 1/2 inches, the moon snail generally feeds on mollusks such as clams and cockles by drilling a hole in the shell. Alternate methods involve suffocating its prey by wrapping them in that gigantic foot until they suffocate and die. Clam shells found with a perfectly round hole drilled in them were probably eaten by moon snails.