Haliotis discus

Appearance

The size of the shell varies between 100 mm and 150 mm. The interior surface has a peculiarly metallic luster, light bronze-green and coppery-red predominating." Haliotis discus is a abalone native to Japan and Korea.

Range and habitat

Haliotis discus is native to the shallow subtidal waters off Japan and Korea in the north western Pacific Ocean. H. Discus discus typically hides between rocks found at depths of 5–10 m (16–33 ft), sometimes as deep as 30 m (98 ft), in the waters around Jeju Island in Korea and Kyushu, Shikoku, and all but the most north eastern areas of Honshu in Japan. H. Discus hannai is typically found in exposed habitats at depths of 1–5 m (3 ft 3 in – 16 ft 5 in) in waters the around Korea and the north eastern coast of Honshu and western coast of Hokkaido in Japan.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

Haliotis discus larvae settle on crust-forming coralline algae and feed on diatoms as they develop, moving out into kelp beds as they near maturity. In H. Discus discus, spawning occurs from October to December.

Adults feed on seaweeds such as Eisenia bicyclis, Undaria pinnatifida, and Ecklonia species.

In crisis

Haliotis discus is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Haliotis discus, Wikidata item Q3011996. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.