luminous flying squid

The striped flying squid is a very distinctive species which has two long, yellowish luminous stripes on the underside of its mantle surface and a fused apparatus for locking the funnel to the mantle. It grows to a mantle length of roughly 220 mm and the maximum mantle length recorded in males is 207 mm while the females are slightly longer at 227 mm. Its fourth left arm is hectocotylized and has 19–22 suckers in two series in its basal two-thirds where there is a weak protective membrane and there are two pointed knobs rather than suckers on its tip where the ventral protective membrane is more developed than that on the dorsal side. The largest suckers on the tentacular clubs have either a smooth margin or a single large tooth. The smaller suckers may have more teeth. The apparatus for locking the funnel organ to the mantel is forked towards the front and is fused to the rear, but only in individuals who have a mantle length over 9 mm. There are small subcutaneous photophores on the underside of mantle, head and of the third and fourth arms, while the fourth arms have a large oval photophore at their bases and another hallway to their tips. The ventral surface of mantle has two stripes of luminous tissue extending along almost its entire length with two large, oval-shaped luminous patches at the end of each mantle strip closest to the head. …

The striped flying squid is distributed in the southern oceans and in the North Pacific Ocean but it is absent from the North Atlantic Ocean. In the southern South Pacific it occurs between 20°S and 35°S in the west and it is found from 13°S to 43°S in the east; in the southern Indian Ocean it occurs north to 15°S and south to 34°S and in the southern South Atlantic Ocean between 10°S and 36°S. In the North Pacific Ocean it occurs from the southern Kuril Islands to western North America as far south as Mexico, between 10°N to 40°N.