Adamussium colbecki has been collected around the antarctic continent from 53°E to the Ross Sea, from the Bellingshausen Sea, off the Antarctic Peninsula, and off the South Shetlands, South Orkneys and South Sandwich Islands. The light dead shells are obviously easily distributed over the sea floor and have been collected not uncommonly in depths of 200-2840 m, but it also occurs alive over a wide bathymetric range from at least 4-1380 m. In the Ross Sea live specimens have not been collected from shallower than 13 m. Many living shells were collected at a number of stations between 73-183 m. Ralph and Maxwell (1977) studied the growth of this species and showed that it grows to a shell height of about 70 mm in 6-7 years.