Range: New Caledonia.

Description: Small and light. Last whorl usually conical; outline nearly straight. Shoulder angulate to subangulate, edge prominent. Spire of moderate height; outline sigmoid. Larval shell of about 2 whorls, maximum diameter about 1 mm. First 2-3 postnuclear whorls tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps slightly concave, with 0 increasing to 5-7 fine spiral grooves. Last whorl with several spiral ribs near base and weak spiral striae to shoulder.

Ground colour white. Last whorl with 10-15 irregularly interrupted brown spiral lines. Line at shoulder of more regularly set brown dashes, visible on teleoconch spire whorls. Larval shell white. Postnuclear sutural ramps with pale brown radial blotches. Aperture white.

Habitat and Habits: In 350-595 m.

Discussion: In colour pattern of the last whorl and spire C. kanakinus resembles C. hirasei. The latter species is much larger (to 92 mm); it has a lower spire (RSH 0.09- 0.14), solid rather than interrupted spiral lines around the last whorl and spots rather than dashes at the shoulder, and it lacks brown radial blotches on the spire.

C. kanakinus 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.