Another paralarval octopus ID Request

[CephBirk]

Okay, this little guy I found 30 meters down in the water column at night off the coast of southern California. It has rather long arms. The four large chromatophores on the head and large chromatophores on the arms were constantly expressed. The rest of the arms and mantle had much smaller variable chromatophores. It turned quite red when disturbed and had distinctly brown ink. Any ideas?

Also, what kinds of other features can I be looking for in the future?

Thanks in advance!

 

[DWhatley]

I have experience with only two warm water benthic hatchlings so I'm not guessing but will throw out my observation for comment. Even though you say the arms are long, they are pretty short compared to the mantle. With the benthic animals the adult proportions are not far off at birth and attained very quickly but the pelagic barely have arms at release from their casings (I mentally think of pelagic hatchlings as premature animals that incubate in the water column). I am going to guess that this one is a pelagic animal that is getting close to becoming benthic (because of the number of chromataphores and defined arms) so I would assume about 3 weeks old and possibly something with and arm to mantle ratio of 3:1?