This is an gregarious euryhalin species, which lives in muddy or on algal environments in brackish waters, occasionally stagnant, and in lagunar systems. Jeffreys: « …lives in ponds and ditches into which the sea only flows at high water or in spring tides » (Brit. Conch. vol. I). Grazer and detritus feeder.

« Turbo with a smooth, glossy, thin shell, with six ventricose, or much rounded volutions, of a light pellucid horn-colour; but when the animal is in it, the appearance is black. Apex moderately pointed. Aperture suborbicular, closed by a thin, wrinkled, corneous operculum. Margin almost intire the whole way round. Length one eighth of an inch; breadth about one third its length. […] This shell retains the greater part of its black colour when preserved with the animal in; but dead specimens are opaque white, as Mr. Walker describes it; and was probably the only state in which Mr. Jacobs had ever seen it, by giving it the name of eburneus, (as Mr. Adams informs us.) » – G. Montagu: Testacea Brittanica vol. II, London 1803, p.317. – A specimen from Skala Marion, western coast, Thasos island, Eastern Makedonia and Thrace, NE. Greece. 1,9mm.

High-spired specimen from beach drift, Le Grau-du-Roi, Gard, S. France. 3,6mm. – This form as often been confused with Hydrobia acuta (sensu Boeters, 1984). The true Hydrobia acuta (sensu Mars and Radoman) has a narrower aperture and flatter whorls. See Giusti, Manganelli & Bodon, 1998.