Bathyteuthis berryi

Bathyteuthis berryi ventral view. Drawing from Roper (1968).

The nomenclatural history of B. berryi is straightforward, because it is the only bathyteuthid known in the eastern North Pacific Ocean off North America. It has several distinguishing characters that make it easy to identify.

The type locality is the Catalina Basin, south-southwest of Catalina Island, off Southern California. The holotype is housed at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, California.

This species is bathypelagic at 800-1200 m (and probably much deeper) in the eastern Pacific waters off Southern California (Young, 1972).

1. Arms
2. 1. Protective membranes well developed and fleshy proximally, without free trabeculae.
   2. Arms long; ends attenuate.
   3. Arm suckers extremely numerous, about 275 on each of arms I-III.
   4. Arm sucker rings with 10-14 very low, small, rounded or subtriangular, separated, knoblike teeth.

Figure. Oral views of arms, tentacle and suckers of B. berryi, holotype, male, 49 mm ML. A- Arm I. B- Tentacular club. C-F- Arm suckers. G- Buccal sucker. H- Inner ring of club sucker. Drawings from Roper (1968).

1. Head
   
   1. Beaks: Descriptions can be found here: Lower beak; upper beak.
      
      
2. Tentacles
   1. Tentacles relatively long, robust; clubs short, unexpanded, undifferentiated.
3. Gills
   1. Gills long, broad.

Bathyteuthis berryi, and presumably all species of Bathyteuthis, brood their young (Bush, et al., 2012). B. berryi females have been observed brooding egg contained within single layered sheets between depths of about 900 and 1400 m (i.e., within its normal depth range); the female photographed below was found to be carrying 360 eggs in its egg sheet (Bush, et al., 2012).

View a video of squid brooding eggs in deep midwaters here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUc-N4IOt4c

So few specimens of paralarvae and juveniles are known that little can be said about the early life history of the species after hatching. The smallest specimens available are identifiable to B. berryi by the greater number of suckers and the longer attenuate arms in comparison with the other 2 species. Also, the gills are proportionally larger than in B. abyssicola (Roper, 1969).