Hey guys, me and a friend are doing a project in school about an endangered animal of our choice, we want to do a ceph, so I was wondering if any of you knew of one that I could use. We need to be able to Identify some background information (general information about the animal, historical and present population), the problem (why they are endangered), and the solution (what has been done to help, are there problems that make the opporation difficult, what orginizations are involved, and what individuals can do to help). Is the wonderpus officially endangered and would I be able to answer these questions on it? What about a species of cuttlefish that I would be able to easily retrieve this information on?

Thanks in advance!!!

Wunderpus photogenicus is not an ESA listed species, and I am not sure that any ceph is. Unfortunately the way ESA law is currently structured the burden of proof is on those who wish to have a species listed to demonstrate that it is indeed a vulnerable population. That is very hard to do with cephs as a whole. IUCN listings are a bit more liberal, but I don't know that they have any listed cephs either. You can browse however at http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/search-basic.

Marine animals are very poorly represented on most endangered lists, including the IUCN red list. In my fairly cynical opinion, there are only two ways to get on the list if you are a marine species. 1. be a political football on an international scale (i.e., whales, patagonian toothfish), or 2. be a commercially important species that has been fished to collapse point (some tuna and cod species maybe?) Unfortunately neither of these really apply to cephs, so the chances of finding documented evidence of endangerment is not very high.

What about trying a shark species or a cetacean? There will be tons of info out there on those, I would think, and at least its still marine...

While they are not, to my knowledge, listed, Nautilus have been a concern for several years and there is probably more background material to be had with them than with other cephalopods.

Roy

I think nautilus is listed as 'vulnerable' by the Australian govt, but not threatened or endangered (not sure about other country's listings). Would that count?

http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/nautcon.php

is a summary of the Nautilus situation a few years ago... there's a typo that leaves out the author, but the "Cephalopod Articles" page lists Neale Monks.

Sadlky, it has to be listed as endangered, it doesnt matter where, it just has to be listed as endangered somewhere. We were planning on doing the leatherback sea turtle if we couldn't find a ceph.
Thanks for the help!

The smalltooth sawfish (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0604_030604_sawfish.html) is an interesting, endangered marine animal.