Chiroteuthis veranii (Frrussac, 1835): the 36th cephalopod species from the eastern Mediterranean off Israel

During a deep-sea survey off the Mediterranean coast of Israel conducted on 31 July 2013 a small, but well preserved fragment of the tentacular stalk of Chiroteuthis veranii was collected at a depth of 978 m. The finding constitutes the first indication that this deep-sea cephalopod is living in the deeper parts of the southern Levantine Sea. It is the 36 th cephalopod species recorded from the Eastern Mediterranean off Israel. A year ago we reported the presence of the odd Bobtail squid Heteroteuthis dispar (Rüppel, 1844) off the Mediterranean coast of Israel (Mienis et al., 2013). The present note reports the identification of fragments of a previously unrecorded deep sea cephalopod species off the Israeli coast. Fig. 1: Chiroteuthis veranii (Férussac, 1835) copy of the drawing from Pfeffer, 1912. On 31 July 2013 the research vessel Shikmona carried out a deep-sea survey off the Mediterranean coast of Israel using a 'Marinovich' trawl (1.6m high, 14m wide, cod-end mesh of 10mm, 25mm at top, 20mm at middle). At station 6 two hauls were conducted during daytime: one at bottom depth of 974-977 m (start: 32° 01.390 N 034° 14.346 E, end: 31° 57.913 N 034° 12.780 E), and the other at 980-981 m (start: 31° 58.021 N 034° 12.779 E, end: 32° 01.579 N 034° 14.108 E). The material was sorted on deck to the lowest possible taxonomic level, photographed, labeled and tissue samples were taken for DNA extraction (for the latter procedure we refer to Shaish et al. in prep.). The