Reply To: Techeiles nowadays

hello99: in those days, according to one of the meforshim, (forgot which one) the70 year surfacing of the chilazonim was a miraculous occurence which only happened during the time of the beis hamikdash. after that, people had to hunt for them, which made it very hard to get. (there were no scuba masks)so the large mounds of trunculus shells were probably because of that miraculous appearance. otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense how there could be so many trunculus shells in one spot. even today it’s almost impossible to harvest so many. it must have been a miracle.

also one of the early rishonim (i need to look into this more bc i forgot which one) identifies kela ilan with “indiko” (which is most likely indigo).

no chemicals are needed to make the dye turn blue (unlike the cuttlefish which im not going into). it’s logical to say that in the times of the gemara they did the dying outdoors, which would expose the dye to sunlight. that’s like saying that it’s fake because you have to take the dye out of the animal for it to turn purple (not red). in fact, the rambam says it turns different colors before turning blue.