Andaman Enope Squid

Abralia andamanica Goodrich, 1896

ORIGINAL REFERENCE.—Abralia andamanica Goodrich, 1896:9, pl. 2: figs. 38–45.

DEPOSITION OF TYPES.—Syntypes: IMC M539/1, female, 38 mm VML (40 mm DML), R/V Investigator sta 224, Andaman Sea, 14°54′30″N, 96°13′E, 23 Feb 1897, “not very good condition” (Massy, 1916:239). IMC M9321/2, male, 24 mm DML, R/V Investigator sta 590, Mergui Archipeligo, Andaman Sea, condition unknown. IMC M9320/2, female, 35 mm ML, same as preceding lot, condition unknown.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.—Northeast Indian Ocean; Philippines (Voss, 1963); off Japan (Sasaki, 1929; Kubota et al., 1982; Okutani et al., 1987; Tsuchiya, 1993); eastern tropical Pacific (Okutani, 1974); off southern Japan to Tasman Sea (Nesis and Nikitina, 1987).

COMMENTS.—Tsuchiya (1993) considers this to be a mesopelagic-boundary species. This may be a species complex (see Burgess, 1992).

Abralia andamanica is a species of enoploteuthid cephalopod native to the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. It is known from Australia, Indonesia, Japan and Hawaiʻi. It is associated with shelf waters, and will rise to the upper water column at night to feed. Females spawn eggs 0.9–1.5 mm in diameter in gelatinous strings.