Would it be apt to construct some based upon of common names or derivatives of etymologies from Family names?
You could employ cross appointments from birds and mammals, trades, or even parody.
•  Dole of Dove Shells
•  Dairy of Milk Conchs
•  A haberdashery of Helmet shells.
•  Tundish of Tun Shells
•  Pantheon of Cypraea
•  Parlor of Cones

Ellen (for the humor of it)  It is a Colony of Seagulls (alternates: squabble, flotilla, scavenging)
...Flock of Seagulls is a pop band.

Thanks for your fun post.

Les

-----------------------------------------
From: Conchologists List, On Behalf Of Ellen Bulger
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2015 8:20 AM

Howdy Campers,

We all know the common ones: a swarm of bees, a herd of deer, a flock of seagulls, for mollusks we have a bed of oysters.

We've heard about some of the archaic silly ones that stick because they are so odd: a Parliament of owls, a murder of crows. Though I believe ornithologists who study Corvines use the term Crew (Krewe?) When you come across a group of mushrooms in the woods, they are commonly known as a flush. 

Ye olde Wikipedia sayeth that the collective nouns for snails are: an escargotoire, a rout, a walk.  None seem very satisfactory to me. If French snail farmers wish to use escargotoire, I will defer to them. But I won't use it for marine species, and it does not strike me as suitable even for wild pulmonates. 

Snails don't walk, they crawl or lurch. I remember seeing milk conchs off Governor's Harbour in such a abundance that they put me in minds of the legendary herds of bison in the American west before the European settlers made their destruction part of the program of genocide. But herd is not a term that could be used for conch in the Bahamas now, what with the population of those animals in collapse. If you are lucky enough to see a group of conch, perhaps you might call them a lurch?

A group of chitons on a rock face might be called an encrustation. The same would work nicely for limpets or other snails that return to a home port/pocket.How about the burrowers? A sneak of cones? And those bivalves that grow together, a bouquet of Spondylus? Then we might have a flutter of file clams!

But these are not my creatures, I'm just offering suggestions.  But one group is my obsession. Have you ever been diving or snorkeling and spotted a group of weed-cloaked Xenophora snails together? They might be resting or grazing or possibly in a state of gastropodal meditation. But often as not they are crawling along together in some local migration, a molluscan Birnam Wood. 

If you have seen this, you must agree there can be no collective noun more apt than An archipelago of Xenophora!
Happy holidays all,
Ellen

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs
To leave this list, click on the following web link:
http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1
Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and
click leave the list.
----------------------------------------------------------------------