Little Omani Cuttlefish

[Hajar]

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.

 

[Hajar]

Thanks! I'll do that in future. I tried another clip (out of the 5 minutes or so I filmed them for), but was frustrated by the quality degradation.

We set up a marine aquarium this summer, stimulated by the idea of having a cephalopod to observe, but now I'm thinking that I'm going to enjoy the cuttlefish in the wild and keep the tank for watching the corals, anemones, worms, urchin, shrimp and fish that are in there now.

 

[Hajar]

Thales, do your S. pharaonis show a zebra-stripe pattern? That is quite striking when you see them laid out in the fishmarket here. The couple shown above from Marjan Bay did not show this pattern in any of their various displays.

I found a photo of a different cuttlefish with a neon blue line here: Picture #: 012840

 

[Hajar]

.. although, now that I look again, I do see the fine transverse stripes.

 

[DWhatley]

I am out of my league with cuttle ID Hajar (and still novice with the octos) but from watching and reading, the zebra stripe pattern seems to show on dominant males of multiple species during mating as an aggressive display toward other males and according to this video to determine if an encounter is with a male or a female (the dialog is a bit hokey ). The cuttlefish part starts at 2:47 through the end.

 

[Hajar]

Beautiful filming (the commentary is very sweet). Thank you.

We saw just one big cuttlefish today, but sadly it came out of the water impaled on the spear of a local spearfisherman, expelling gushes of ink. I know it will make a great meal, but we didn't enjoy seeing this.

 

[rryyddeerr]

are they yummy?

 

[CaptFish]

are they yummy?

That depends on ones taste buds but yes a lot of people love them, my brother included, he says its identical too calamari

 

[Hajar]

The difficult thing though is when the mindset of "Hmm, tasty seafood, let's kill it and eat it" intrudes on the mindset of watching amazing versatile, beautiful and intelligent living creatures (when the last thing to occur would be to hurt them). I normally manage to keep the two separated.

"Spearman" had several big cuttles dangling from his spear today (they are easy victims, trusting and fearless). We went to the next bay along where there were turtles and spectacular fish, but very few corals and no cephalopods that we could see.

 

[DWhatley]

When I get challenged with the food question, I answer that I keep food as a pet and leave it at that. Not the best answer perhaps but it usually stops the discussion.

 

[Hajar]

Now that we have Ramses in the aquarium it was fun to go back to this video of the little wild juvenile.

 

[DWhatley]

I love hearing the kids excitement trying to follow it.

 

[Hajar]

Yes, pure enthusiasm.