Little Omani Cuttlefish

Joined
Mar 7, 2009
Messages
542
Greetings all.

Can anybody identify this little (roughly 10 cm) cuttlefish? It was in very shallow water at low tide near the Oman Dive Centre close to Muscat.

Apologies for the poor images (two are stills from video). There are dark and light transverse bands on the mantle and an abundance of tubercles. When we were face to face it raised two tentacles to me.

I think the large cuttlefish we see in the supermarkets here are Sepia pharaonis, but this little animal looks very different.

Grateful for your help.
 

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Thank you for that!

Excellent to see the variety of cephalopods living in the local sea. I couldn't identify my cuttlefish from the various Sepia illustrations, but will start to look out for different cuttlebones on the beach. I have just one in the house right now, collected for comparison with this fossil fotopic.net.
 
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S. latimanus gets fairly big, so yours would have been a juvenile, hard to tell from the pictures, they're so versatile in their presentation; just look at this one mesmerizing an intended prey (lure in this case).

 
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They call it "passing cloud", fairly common, actually, amongst cephalopods, check out little Flamboyant walking over the seafloor, happily passing its cloud :smile:

 
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O! B!
happily passing its cloud
:tomato:

If you get the opportunity to photograph more, one of the physical elements that seems to be diagnostic is the shape of the eye (iris) so getting a clear, close picture may provide a better clue than any coloration or other body part. taking pictures of the aquarium residence, I find I see a lot more in some of my photos than what I observed at the moment of taking the picture so just targeting the eye and shooting away might produce more than you would think. These little guys are so tiny though, that I am not sure there is any possible id at this point. Have you gone back to see if the appear territorial?
 
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Thank you Ob! That is fascinating, astonishing and also very entertaining to watch.

"D", I'll take better pictures next time and look them in the eyes. This one was alone and very well camouflaged until he moved. We see lots of juvenile fish (especially butterfly,damsel, sergeant majors, goatfish, groupers, some rays and morays), in the shallows so I would guess this little cuttlefish was a juvenile too. There are no mangroves in this bay, but there are in nearby bays (Qurum where I live and Bandar Khairan) and these must be great environments for the juveniles to hide in.
 
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I went for a swim after work today and spent a good long while watching these two adults. Awesome. There was quite a lot of conversation going on between the two of them - partly through touch and partly through colour changes. Can anyone put a name to this species?
 

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