Paphies ventricosa

Paphies ventricosa - or Toheroa after the name of the kind in the language of the Māori - is a large shell from the family of Mesodesmatidae, which is endemic to New Zealand. She lives along the coast of the North Island and the South Island, but their main habitat is the west coast of the North Island. She prefers wide sandy beaches with extensive sand dunes, which include fresh water, which seeps through the sand into the sea and there promotes the growth of diatoms and other plankton.

The Toheroa is a large shell with a white, elongated shell with a bulge in the middle. The Toheroa was a very popular food, which was often made ​​into soup, which also gained international notoriety. After overfishing in the 1950s and 1960s the collection of shells was greatly limited.

The shell of the clam is up to 117 mm long, 81 mm wide and 38 mm thick.

Swell

• Checklist of New Zealand molluscs
• Arthur William Baden Powell: New Zealand Mollusca, William Collins Publishers Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1979 ISBN 0-00-216906-1

• Mussels
• Bivalvia