Fan Mussel

• conservaciónIt is one of the largest bivalve molluscs in the Mediterranean, and its populations have collapsed over the past decade because of a parasite that has caused mass mortality right across the sea.
• It is the largest bivalve endemic to the Mediterranean and one of the largest in the world: it reaches 120 cm.
• Since the autumn of 2016 it has suffered a mass mortality caused by the parasite Haplosporidium pinnae, with outbreaks reaching 100% mortality within a few months. In 2019 it was moved to the Critically Endangered category.
• It is considered functionally extinct across most of its range: a survey of 800 km of Italian coast in 2022 did not find a single living individual.
• Its last refuges are brackish coastal lagoons. In the Thau lagoon, in southern France, a population of more than 100,000 individuals survives at densities of up to 511 animals per 100 m².
• Its byssus filaments were woven into sea silk, a legendary golden cloth that barely any craftswomen are still able to work.
• It is protected by the Barcelona Convention and by European legislation.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - external calcareous bivalve shell (mollusc)

Habitat and environment

Posidonia meadows and soft Mediterranean bottoms between 0.5 and 60 m, anchored upright in the sediment by the narrow end of the shell; today its last healthy populations are in brackish lagoons

Sources consulted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinna_nobilis