The small sand cuttlefish of muck sites, raising skin flaps over its eyes when it settles.
A small cuttlefish with a mantle to about 10 cm, mottled brown and cream, with a pair of prominent skin flaps raised over the eyes and a scattering of papillae along the back that it puts up when settled and flattens when moving. It is the cuttlefish a diver meets most often on open sand in the region, and it is regularly mistaken for a juvenile broadclub, from which it differs in the eye flaps and in never approaching that size. The genus was separated from Sepia in a recent revision, so older references list it as Sepia papuensis.
Sits partly buried through the middle of the day, drawing sand over the mantle with the arms, and works over the bottom for shrimps and small fish in the late afternoon and at night. Hunting is done at close range with a short lunge rather than the extended display of the larger species. Recorded from about 2 to 30 m. It will hold position for a photographer and then jet a metre or two and settle again, so a diver who follows without crowding usually gets several attempts at the same animal.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
