Distribution
This species is native to the marine and estuarine waters of the western Pacific, from the Sea of Japan, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and the Bohai Sea.
Rapana venosa, is included in Russia's Red Book as threatened with extinction. The original known habitat for this species was the Far East, but in 1947 it was found in the Black Sea, and its shell became a popular souvenir traded in the Crimea. Recently this species has been found as an exotic in the Chesapeake Bay, on the eastern coast of the USA.
- Nonindigenous distribution
According to some authors, it appears to be the case that the spreading of this species outside its natural range has been made possible by the planktonic larval stage being transported along with ballast water in the hulls of ships, or that egg masses may have been transported with products of marine farming.
Rapa whelks were first found in the Black Sea in the 1940s. Within a decade this mollusk had spread along the Caucasian and Crimean coasts and moved into the Sea of Azov. From 1959 to 1972, its range extended into the northwest Black Sea, to the coastlines of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Those whelks have become established in the Adriatic and Aegean sea, and have also been found in the Tyrrhenian sea, the Northern Atlantic coast of France, and the southeast coast of South America, in Uruguay and Rio de La Plata estuary (including Samborombon Bay), in Argentina. In the United States the first specimen discovered was in August 1998 by members of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) Trawl Survey Group in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The species is now widely distributed and established in Chesapeake Bay.
Rapana venosa is considered among 100 worst alien species in Europe in DAISIE European Invasive Alien Species Gateway, one of two marine gastropods on the list.
Read more about this topic: Veined Rapa Whelk
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