The deep-blue dye Tyrian purple, which was highly valued, was used in the making of garments for early Phoenicians and later, for Greek and Roman royalty. It is a toxic secretion (to crabs and small fish but is harmless to mammals. Only a few genera and species of predatory gastropods (snails) belonging to the family Muricidae, have this secretion. Most of these gastropods live in the Mediterraean Sea and closely adjacent areas in the Atlantic Ocean (Radwin, and A. D’Attilio, 1976; en.Wikipedia.org, 2022). The majority of these gastropods, colloquially called “rock snails,” are Bolinus brandaris (Linné, 1758), which was originally identified as Murex brandaris Linné, 1758. There are, however, a few additional muricid gastropods and other closely related families of gastropods that have this or similar secretions. These other gastropods can live elsewhere in the world (en.Wikipedia.org, 2022).
The extraction of the dye from the snails is a time-consuming and tedious process, and one gram requires 100 kilograms of the gastropod animal. One gram sells for between $2800 and $4000! The exact process was not recorded by the ancients, and learning how to do it required years of trial and error by a few modern-day experimentors (who seem intent on keeping the process secret). Additionally, the process produces a foul stench of sulphated hydrocarbons (Radwin and D’Attilio, 1976). For more details about Tryrian purple, see Goddard (1972).
References Cited:
Bañon, R. and M.G. Tasende. 2008. First record of the purple dye murex Bolinus brandaris (Gastropoda: Muricidae) and a revise list of non-native mollusks from Galician waters (Spain, NE Atlantic). Aquatic Invasions, v. 3, issue 3:331–334.
en.Wikipedia.org 2022.
Goddard, C.S. 1972. The tale of the Tryian Purple. Of Sea and Shore (summer 1972), pp. 89–90
Radwin, G.E. and A. D’Attilio. 1976. Murex shells of the world. An illustrated guide to the Muricidae. Stanford University Presss, Stanford, California. 284 pp.
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