CRITTER: Meet pupu leholeho‘oni‘oni‘o, the swollen bubble shell

Terry Lilley / contributed

The pupu leholeho‘oni‘oni‘o’s light and thin shell is too small to fit their entire body into.

This beautiful one inch long pink and white marine snail is one of the hardest to find Hawaiian shells. I have over 1,000 hours of underwater video of marine life in Hawai‘i and I have only found one of these live shells and that was by accident! I was doing a night snorkel at ‘Anini Beach in Kaua‘i and when I came back to shore I was sitting in one foot of water getting ready to turn off my video lights when I noticed something crawling on the sand next to my foot. I was super excited to see it was a live bubble shell.

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