Some bathypelagic cephalopods from South African waters

Through the kindness of Mr. M. J. Penrith and Dr. J. R. Grindley of the South African Museum the writer received in 1963 a small collection of cephalopods taken during the course of midwater trawling (Grindley and Penrith, I965) in South African waters, mostly off the coast of Natal. The collections consisted of 112 specimens belonging to 17 families, 28 genera and 32 species of which 13 species were unrecorded in the list of South African cephalopods given by the writer in I962 (Voss, I962). Although only one new species and one new subspecies were found, several of the other species are poorly known or confused in the literature and these are treated in some detail in the present paper. One new species is named on the basis of a description by another author. The remainder are listed for the record with a reference to pertinent literature treating with the individual species and with an indication of their general distribution. The collections were obtained by the use of an Isaacs-Kidd midwater trawl (IKMT). A few were from stomach contents of the predatory bathypelagic fish Alepisaurus ferox, which were taken by long-line at IKMT stations. All of the specimens are deposited in the South African Museum (SAM)