Cephalopods
Original title: Cefalópodos
Survey of the cephalopod molluscs found in Madeiran waters, including the octopus, squid, cuttlefish, Spirula and the flying squid (pota).
There are several species of this class of molluscs, coastal as well as pelagic or abyssal.
The most common are the octopus (Octopus vulgaris), the squid (Loligo vulgaris) and the cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), all of them edible; Spirula Peronii, which is stranded in large numbers on beaches such as Caniçal, Porto da Cruz and Porto Santo; and the pota (Ommastrephes sagittatus), pelagic and edible, common a few miles off the coast. Among the rarer species is Argonauta argo, which has been seen at Porto Santo.
Alexandre A. Girard listed 11 species of these molluscs, some of them doubtful, while Robert Boog Watson mentions only the first four referred to above, together with the last.
In this article
Place
Places mentioned · 03
- Caniçal
Machico. Beaches where Spirula shells are stranded in large numbers.
Isolated fishing parish at the eastern tip of Madeira, at the root of Ponta de São Lourenço. It originated as a Moniz entail and João Teixeira's hunting reserve and became a parish around 1561. It holds a Piedade feast with a boat procession and has a fort built after a pirate raid.
- Porto da Cruz
Machico. Beaches where Spirula shells are stranded in large numbers.
North-coast parish created in 1577 and noted for good-quality wines. It was transferred from Santana to Machico municipality in 1852 and was the seat of a capitania-mor. It was also a fishing port where some sperm whales were landed.
- Porto Santo
Island where Spirula strands and the rare Argonauta argo has been seen.
An island of the archipelago, settled alongside Madeira and forming one of the three captaincies. It has always constituted a single parish, dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Piedade, whose church was repeatedly sacked. The Elucidário records the Moorish pirate raid of 1617, its own Misericórdia and a rainwater channel built on this drought-prone island.
People
People mentioned · 02-
Naturalist who listed 11 cephalopod species from Madeira, some of them doubtful.
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Naturalist who recorded only five cephalopod species from Madeira.