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Octopods of the Northern and Central Adriatic Sea

Octopods (order Octopoda) make a significant share of the cephalopod fauna in the Adriatic Sea. Some species, e.g. Eledone moschata, are abundant and commercially important, while others are less frequent and scientific information about them are scarce. In order to deepen the knowledge on this group of cephalopods, data on findings of octopods in the eastern part of the Northern and Central Adriatic Sea collected during MEDITS expeditions in the period from 1996 to 2019 were analysed. Besides, the overview of other reported findings of these cephalopods in the area were presented. For the registered species, depth and spatial distributions, biomass and abundance indices, sex ratios and proportions of gonad maturity stages were presented. As expected, E. moschata, Eledone cirrhosa and Octopus vulgaris had the highest average biomass index (kg/km2) and abundance index (N/km2), as well as the highest frequency of occurrence (%f). All other octopods had significantly lower average biomass and abundance indices, and the frequency of occurrence. Among them, according to the frequency of occurrence, the species Octopus salutii (3.02) was the most common, and it was followed by the species Octopus macropus (1.41) and Scaeurgus unicirrhus (1.39). The lowest values of the frequency of occurrence were recorded for Pteroctopus tetracirrhus (0.25) and Macrotritopus defilipii (0.24) with only a few specimens of these two species being found in over 20 years of investigations in the area.

octopods, Adriatic Sea, distribution

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