Cephalopod ID Guide for the North Sea

The intention of this guide is to help identifying cephalopod species in the North Sea which you may find
while SCUBA diving, snorkelling, a boat trip or even while walking along a rocky shore. It focuses on shallow
water and subsurface-inhabiting species or those which at least partially spent their life in depths less than
50 meters. As you may encounter these animals in the wild most likely just for a short glance, we kept the
description of each cephalopod rather simple and based on easy-to-spot external features.
This guide was made within the scope of the project “Cephalopod Citizen Science”. This project tries to
gather scientific information about the “daily life” of cephalopods by analysing pictures of those animals
which were posted in several, project-related facebook groups. For further information about this project,
please follow the link below:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Cephalopod-Citizen-Science

We hope this guide will provide useful information and help you to identify those cephalopods you may
encounter soon.