What is this?

[marku]

It's definitely a volute, can't say which species though. Biggest I've seen was about 4" long. We see them in the shallows (<5m) in seagrass beds and sandy areas. They're more active than cone shells; even during the day. Have seen them in Northern Palawan and Dumaguete (Philippines) so far. A guy I know said he put one in his aquarium and the other gastropods started jumping out of their shells to avoid the volute, which means they probably prey on other shelled molluscs.

Don't know if they're venomous though, does anybody out there know?

 

[Blox]

A number of years ago, on occasion of a family vaction to Phuket, Thailand, we purchased the shell of one that looked pretty much like this as a souvenir - it was ever since called our "family shell", because we jointly picked it and it is displayed on one of our coffee tables.. It was a huge shop that sold shells by bucket loads, and we figured it was "not real", i.e. suspected it was kinda fake/a replica or something.

I have since seen this kind of snail alive and kicking.... ermm... crawling... gliding... twice. Both times in fairly shallow water (once about as shallow as about 2 meters, the other one in about 6 or 7 meters of water) in the Gulf of Thailand.

Both of them were pretty large - I estimate about 12 to 15 cm in length (that would be about 5 to 6 inches to the imperial measurement supporters out there).

I was (and still am) pretty keen to identify what kind of snail it was and also thought it to be Volutidae, as does marku about yours, but could not get it narrowed down further. I'm pretty curious what the final word is on this specimen.

[Edit] Could this be a Nobilis Volute?

 

[riddler]

It's definitely a volute, can't say which species though.

Amoria Undulata?