Squid
Common Cuttlefish
Sepia officinalis
Sepia officinalis Linnaeus, 1758 · Sepiidae WoRMS 141444
Reference photos
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A broad, flattened cephalopod, oval in cross-section, with a paired fin running from behind the head to the tip of the body, eight arms and two long tentacles it shoots out to seize prey. The largest cuttlefish in UK waters, it buries in sand by day and changes colour very rapidly.
Depth
Subtidal waters to 200 m, most abundant in the upper 100 m, with larger animals deeper
Size
Up to about 45-49 cm mantle length and 4 kg, commonly 25-30 cm
Habitat
Demersal on the continental shelf, on sandy and muddy bottoms, often among algae and seagrass
Behaviour
Lives alone and does not form shoals; buries in sand by day and ambushes prey from it, changing colour very rapidly
Diet
I eat
- Crustaceans, chiefly mysids, shrimps, prawns and crabs, plus amphipods, isopods and ostracods
- Small bottom-living fish, including gobies, sandeels, whiting and wrasses, and sometimes flatfish
- Molluscs, polychaete worms and other cephalopods; big individuals eat smaller cuttlefish
Eats me
- A wide range of bony fish, including pollack, European seabass, ballan wrasse and conger eel
- Sharks and rays, among them the lesser spotted dogfish, smooth-hound and blue shark
- Grey seals, along with monk seals and three species of dolphin
Where you'd find it
Mostly seen in the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the North Sea, and only here and there elsewhere.
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.
Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) (2017)
ID guideCefas guide, freely distributed; byte-identical copy already in the repo at decision-tree/id-guides/cefas-cephalopods-uk.pdflink checked 2026-08-30
The W-shaped pupil in cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis): Functions for improving horizontal vision
Elsevier, Vision Research 83: 19-24 (2013)
Paperlink checked 2026-08-30
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2005)
FAOFAO open accesslink checked 2026-08-30
Cephalopod biology and fisheries in Europe: II. Species Accounts
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) (2015)
PaperICES Library open accesslink checked 2026-08-30
Common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis)
Marine Life Information Network, Marine Biological Association of the UK
MarLINlink checked 2026-08-30
Sepia officinalis Linnaeus, 1758
World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board)
TaxonomyCC BY 4.0link checked 2026-08-30
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