Common cuttlefish

A broad, flattened oval body with a continuous frill of fin running all the way around the mantle like a skirt, eight short arms and two long feeding tentacles kept folded away in pockets under the eyes. The eyes are the giveaway: the pupil is a distinct W shape. Skin colour runs through sand, marble, chocolate and, in excited males, a pulsing black-and-white zebra pattern that rolls across the body in waves. Inside is the cuttlebone, the white oval float that washes up on Maltese beaches by the thousand. Mantle length is usually 15 to 30 cm here, with the largest animals reaching about 45 cm.

It hovers rather than swims, rippling the fin skirt so it hangs motionless in mid-water, then shoots the two tentacles out in a fraction of a second to snatch a shrimp or small fish. On sand it will settle and flick sediment over itself with the arms until only the eyes show. Faced with a diver it does not usually flee: it turns to face you, raises the first pair of arms and flashes, which is a display rather than a threat.

Around Malta it is most reliably seen in spring, when adults move into shallow sandy and seagrass bottoms between about 3 and 20 m to breed and lay clusters of black, grape-like eggs on Posidonia rhizomes, gorgonians, ropes and anything else with a stem. Outside the breeding season it moves deeper. It is common on the market as siċċ, usually cooked in its own ink.