Photos: Cephalopods - Squid, Cuttlefish and Octopi

Most of my squid encounters have been at night. During night dives, smart squid hunt at the edge of our lights, and it was often easy to find them by swimming out into the black a little bit. Every once in awhile, we might also see a tiny flash of irridescent green in a sandy area on the wall, which would usually turn out to be a juvenile bobtail squid, sometimes no larger than the head of a pin! Bobtail squid bury themselves in the sand and need to be approached carefully. We also saw some adult bobtail squid, who are considerably larger (see photos, below).

Other interesting cephalopods we saw were wonderpus (very rare) and the tiny, venomous blue-ring octopus (which I was quite proud to find on my own during a mandarinfish dive. :).

Most species IDs and some image captions are courtesy of Judy Foester.