Range: Japan to Philippines and South China Sea.

Description: Medium-sized to large, solid. Last whorl conical, ventricosely conical or slightly pyriform; outline convex adapically, straight to slightly concave below. Shoulder angulate to subangulate, slightly carinate. Spire of low to moderate height, outline slightly concave to slightly sigmoid. Early postnuclear whorls tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat, with 3 increasing to 5-6 spiral grooves; additional spiral threads on last 2 ramps. Last whorl with a few broad but rather weak spiral ribs at base.

Ground colour white tinged with violet. Last whorl with about 18-30 rather regularly spaced reddish brown spiral lines from base to subshoulder area. Larval whorls white. Outer margins of teleoconch sutural ramps with regularly spaced reddish to blackish brown spots. Aperture white except for violet area near shoulder.

Periostracum yellowish brown, thin, translucent, smooth.

Habitat and Habits: In 100-240m.

Discussion: C. hirasei may resemble C. kanakinus in colour-pattern. For the distinctions, see the Discussion of that species.

C. hirasei range map

This section contains verbatim reproductions of the accounts of 316 species of Conus from the Indo-Pacific region, from Manual of the Living Conidae, by Röckel, Korn and Kohn (1995). They are reproduced with the kind permission of the present publisher, Conchbooks.

All plates and figures referred to in the text are also in Röckel, Korn & Kohn, 1995. Manual of the Living Conidae Vol. 1: Indo-Pacific Region.

The range maps have been modified so that each species account has it own map, rather than one map that showed the ranges of several species in the original work. This was necessary because each species account is on a separate page on the website and not confined to the order of accounts in the book.