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Introduction
The purple dye murex, Bolinus brandaris (Linnaeus, 1758), is a common muricid species that is extensively dispersed throughout the Mediterranean Sea, whereas its distributional range along the adjacent Atlantic Ocean is restricted mainly to the coasts of Portugal and Morocco (Poppe and Goto 1991, Macedo et al. 1999, Houart 2001). Probably as a consequence of accidental introduction of juveniles, B. brandaris has extended its distributional range northwards, and has already been recorded in Galicia (northwestern Spain) (Bañón et al. 2008). This species usually occurs in shallow waters of the sub-littoral zone (Dalla Via and Tappeiner 1981), but can also be found at 100 m (Muzavor and Morenito 1999), 150 m (Houart 2001) or even 200 m depth (Macedo et al. 1999, Malaquias 2007), inhabiting sandy, sandy-muddy and muddy bottoms (Macedo et al. 1999, Muzavor and Morenito 1999, Malaquias 2007).
The purple dye murex was harvested during the Roman Empire using baited wicker baskets (Spanier and Karmon 1987) in order to extract the purple dye that was greatly prized in the ancient Mediterranean (e.g. Reese 1980, 2010, Oliver 2015). Today, B. brandaris is fished for human consumption using diverse types of artisanal fishing gears (Poppe and Goto 1991, Houart 2001), mainly in Portugal (Vasconcelos et al. 2008a) and Spain (Martín et al. 1995, Tirado et al. 2002, Mallol et al. 2004), where this species is an important gastronomic resource and is highly valued in local seafood markets (Ramón et al. 2005, Vasconcelos et al. 2008a), but also in France (Bartolome 1985), Italy (Ramón and Amor 2001, Cecalupo et al. 2006) and Greece (Katsanevakis et al. 2011), and occasionally in Turkey (Ramón and Flos 2001) and Tunisia (Elhasni et al. 2013).
Knowledge on meat yield (weight and proportion of the raw edible content) of seafood products is important, both as general information for the consumers and as specific data for the seafood processing and marketing industry. However, despite its importance and the existence of specialized literature on seafood worldwide (e.g. FAO 1989), information on the meat yield of shellfish and specifically of gastropod species is still relatively scarce and restricted to a few commercial species (either fishery-exploited or aquaculture-produced species) (see compilation by Vasconcelos et al. 2009). In Portugal, the purple dye murex is fished along...