Information about Cypraea pyrum and spurca Habitat

[ft]

David,
I have personally collected all the three species (lurida, spurca and pyrum) in the quite long stretch of coast that goes from about 30 km west of Genova (Italy) to Cannes - that is, including the coast of France nearby the border with Italy.  However, I have been finding live only lurida, not the other two.  You are right: it is quite unusual to find lurida under stones along this coast (at variance with many other places): during the day they can be spotted mostly by enlightening cracks of the rocks.  Maybe this is the reason why I did not find live spurca, which is smaller and much more mimetic.  The best way - to me - to find live spurca during the day is indeed by turning rocks: they tend to fall down free after a couple of seconds.  But they live in that coast: apart from empty shells, I got a couple of live ones from a diving friend.  The only two pyrum I found in sucha  northern area were  crabbed and - indeed - at scuba depth. Both very dark: similar to the one in your picture, but not as dark as an incredible population that is living near Taranto (south-eastern tip of Italy).
My sense is that the whole coast (Italy and France) have them all (including achatidea).  On the Italian side there are several good nice places to dive; trouble is, several areas are now marine park and permits for night dives are difficult to get.  I have unfortunately no info on diving on the French side.
Cheers, Fabio (52-yr old and diving since the age of 17, back in the old times when no BCD's, computers or else were available: just legs and fins to keep buoyancy, and watch + profondimeter + US Navy decompression tables to calculate where and when stop for decompression...).