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Official Florida State Shell - Triplofusus giganteus (Kiener, 1840) Albino Specimens |
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It has been the common
knowledge among shell enthusiasts in northeast Florida for over 30 years
that the intracoastal waterway in St. Johns County between St. Augustine
Inlet, in the north, and Matanzas Inlet, on the south, harbored a
population of so called albino Triplofusus giganteus - those
specimens with a pure white shell. This population may have been first
formally chronicled by Gary Gordon in 1980 when he wrote of his quest
for this morph with veteran St. Augustine shell collector Fred Chauvin
(See:
"In Search Of An Albino Horse Conch" ). Neither of the two areas where the albino specimens have been found (Matanzas River just north of Marineland and the Tolomato River near St. Augustine Inlet) have been routinely shelled during the past decade. However, increased collecting efforts in the Tolomato River, beginning during the Fall of 2007, have demonstrated that this morph is not uncommon at that location. |
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Albino specimen from the Tolomato River near the Usina Bridge, St. Augustine, St. Johns County, Florida, March, 2008 |
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Albinos |
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Albinos |
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Color Varities (orange to albino) |
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