Available farmed, it is a marine and estuarine bivalve that lives on sheltered rocky shores and intertidally. Introduced to Tasmania from Japan in the 1940s, it is now also grown in SA and NSW (Port Stephens, Hawkesbury River and Georges River). A potential threat to the native Rock Oyster, it is banned in most of NSW, and all of Queensland, Victoria, and WA, those grown in the Hawkesbury and Georges Rivers are sterile. Shells are often spiky and quite oval, sometimes elongated, and the meat has a black edge.