Azores to Mediterranean. Predator on seashells. Crawls below the surface of soft bottoms in the infralittoral, leaving a visible trail. Original taxon: Nerita intricata. Synonyms: crassatella, peloritana, similis… Trawled on mud at 15m deep, Málaga, Andalucia, S. Spain. 12mm.

« It is rather allied to Nerita Canrena, which has a gibbous bifid umbilicus; and may possibly indeed prove to be nothing more than a variant of that shell. The varieties of N. Canrena, enumerated by Gmelin, amount to twenty-five, neither of which accords exactly with our shell, and that writer describes them only as native of India, Africa, and America, but it is not unlikely it may be also an European shell. Our specimens are from Weymouth. » Since that time, many geographical matters have been clarified; among them, the fact that Natica intricata, despite an intriguing discussion given by J. Couch in his Cornish fauna about some specimens from Penzance and Plymouth, is not a british seashell, nor indian, african etc.

« Light brown to light ash-colored, speckled with small, irregular white dots and short steaks; six spiral bands marked by reddish or brown arrowheads, evenly distributed across body whorl; first band below suture, topped by a wider band of wavy brown lines in some specimens; base white, with brown band bordering the umbilicus in some but not all specimens. » – Huelsken, Marek, Schreiber & Hollmann: “The Naticidae Of Giglio Island”, Zootaxa 1770, june 2008, via ResearchGate. – Specimen from 30-40m deep, Málaga. 15mm.

Minute axial growth striae. Umbilicus open, with two spiral cords, often strongly marked, sometimes weak; a parietal callus partially covers the umbilicus in the adapical part of the columellar side.