FishSpotterby
Back to the feed

Squid

Atlantic Bobtail

Sepiola atlantica

Sepiola atlantica A. d'Orbigny, 1842 · Sepiolidae WoRMS 141454

Reference photos

Tap a photo to enlarge.

A thumbnail-sized bobtail squid, also called the little cuttlefish: a plump, rounded body of about 2 cm with short rounded fins that do not run its whole length. It buries itself in sand by day and takes mysids and shrimps just above the seabed at dawn and dusk.

Depth

Sublittoral to about 150 m, and on the shelf and upper slope to over 400 m; commonest at 50-120 m off Scotland and 6-50 m in Iberian waters

Size

Up to about 24 mm mantle length, with mature adults averaging around 15 mm

Habitat

Clean sand and gravel on the continental shelf out to the edge of the slope, and inshore in rockpools

Behaviour

Bottom-living; buries itself in sand by day and forages above the seabed at dawn and dusk

Diet

I eat

  • Mysids and decapod shrimps, which are its main prey
  • Prey taken above the seabed, with foraging concentrated at dawn and dusk
  • Mysid shrimp of their own size, which newly hatched animals take by spreading the arms into a crown and shooting the tentacles out

Eats me

  • Harbour porpoise, which appears to find buried bobtails by aiming its sonar into the seabed
  • Small sharks and rays, including lesser spotted dogfish, spurdog, tope, thornback and spotted ray
  • European hake and gurnards, recorded with it in their stomach contents in Galician waters

Where you'd find it

Found around most of Britain and Ireland, though less often in the waters west of Ireland and the waters west of Scotland.

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 Atlantic Bobtail in a clip to add it to your collection.

Spot it in the feed