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Cephalopods are harvested in increasingly large quantities but understanding how to control and manage their stocks, and tracking the routes of the consumption that exploits them, lag behind what has been developed for exploiting finfish. This review attempts to redress the imbalance by considering the status of the major cephalopod stock species and the traceability of cephalopod seafood along the trade value chain. It begins with a general overview of the most important exploited cephalopods, their stock status and their market. Four major cephalopod resources are identified: the three squid species Todarodes pacificus, Dosidicus gigas and Illex argentinus; and one species of octopus, Octopus vulgaris. The techniques and problems of stock assessment (to assess sustainability) are reviewed briefly and the problems and possible solutions for assessing benthic stock such as those of octopuses are considered. An example of a stock well managed in the long term is presented to illustrate the value of careful monitoring and management: the squid Doryteuthis gahi available in Falkland Islands waters. Issues surrounding identification, mislabelling and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing are then reviewed, followed by a discussion of approaches and techniques of traceability as applied to cephalopods. Finally, some of the mobile apps currently available and in development for tracking seafood are compared. This review concludes with observations on the necessity for the strengthening and international coordination of legislation, and more rigorous standards for seafood labelling and for taxonomic curation of DNA sequences available in public databases for use in seafood identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three species of sand bottom octopuses (Cephalopoda) are identified from shallow waters of Taganga Bay, southern Caribbean: the known Amphioctopus burryi (Voss, 1950), one new Amphioctopus species, and one new species of long-arm octopod Macrotritopus beatrixi sp. nov. The preliminary description of the new Amphioctopus species is presented as well as some new features of A. burryi (Voss, 1950) with some ecological notes. A redescription of Macrotritopus defilippi (Verany, 1851) is given as well as the full description of M. beatrixi sp. nov. The new species M. beatrixi sp. nov. is characterized by long arms, seven to eight times the mantle length, third right arm on males hectocotylized, with 56 to 114 suckers (mean 98), ligula small (ligula length index 1–1.25), calamus medium (calamus length index 25–30), and arm autotomy present at different levels. This doubles the number of species of each genus in the Atlantic Ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]