FishSpotterby
Back to the feed

Squid

Veined Squid

Loligo forbesii

Loligo forbesii Steenstrup, 1856 · Loliginidae WoRMS 140270

Reference photos

Tap a photo to enlarge.

A long, slender, cylindrical squid whose paired fins form an elongate diamond running about three quarters of the mantle. Pink, red and brown predominate, with flame-like purplish stripes along the mantle. It gathers near the bottom by day and rises into the water column at night.

Depth

Shelf and shelf edge, mostly 50 to 250 m, with records from 10 m down to over 700 m

Size

Mantle length up to 937 mm in males and 462 mm in females, commonly 200 to 300 mm on the eastern North Atlantic shelf

Habitat

Coastal and continental shelf seas over sandy and muddy bottoms, moving into shallow water to spawn

Behaviour

Aggregates near the bottom by day and disperses into the water column at night; moves offshore as it grows, returning inshore to breed

Diet

I eat

  • Small fish above all, especially gadoids such as whiting and poor cod, clupeids such as sprat, and sandeels
  • Crustaceans, which dominate the diet of juveniles and small squid
  • Other cephalopods, including smaller squid of its own kind

Eats me

  • Toothed whales and dolphins, from pygmy sperm whales and killer whales to common, striped and bottlenose dolphins
  • Seals, both grey and harbour seals
  • Large demersal fish such as Atlantic cod and monkfish

Where you'd find it

Found around most of Britain and Ireland, though less often in the Irish Sea.

ChannelCeltic SeaNorth SeaIrish SeaW of IrelandW of Scotland
Often seenNow and thenWhere PEBL filmsBased on marine survey records (OBIS). Blank seas can mean nobody has looked there, not that the animal is absent.

Sources

Open-access references behind this page. Every statement on this page was read out of one of them; anything that could not be traced to a source was taken off the page rather than left standing. Each link was checked on the date shown, and confirmed then to be about this species.

Name Veined Squid in a clip to add it to your collection.

Spot it in the feed