Carol,

Looks very eatable ! I'm afraid it is "scungilli marinara" (marinière
in French ?) and not maranara. A lot of italien restaurants propose
that on their menu in the States. Busycon carica is not (as far as I
know) a European one so I never had the pleasure to eat it. In France
we use to eat something not far (from the chef point of view !) from
your Busycon (which we call Bulot) but not marinara, just boiled in
salted water with aioli (special garlic mayonaise) !

Have a look on: Molluscs and Man by Amy Edwards
http://museum.nhm.uga.edu/GSC/newsletr/JUN97.html

Sophie

>Don't know if I spelled that right, but we had a guest speaker at our shell
>club meeting yesterday who is a geneticist.  He recently went out on a shrimp
>boat when they were going "conchin'"  They harvested busycon carica, which
>was then processed and shipped up north to make scungilli maranara.
>
>Does anyone know anything about this and is there a holiday of some sort in
>March that the Italians celebrate by eating this stuff?
>
>I'd like any input anyone has.  I plan to write an article for our
>newsletter.  BTW, our speaker found one sinistral carica out of approx.
>10,000 shells he saw.
>
>Carol

Sophie Valtat
16, rue des Ecoles
75005 Paris
France