The ocean, in it’s entirety, is home to an expansive amount of creatures. From big to small, there’s hundreds of thousands of species within the depths of each ocean on this planet. The current amount of species documented is around 246,000, but scientists estimate that the true number may very well be in the millions. And where does that lead us? To the shores of Japan, looking at one of the smaller species out there. A delicacy in many countries, lighting up the oceans in beautiful shades of blue in the dark of the night during spring. The firefly squid, also known as the sparkling enope squid, or hotaru-ika in Japan. A cephalopod, perhaps not entirely unique, but still wonderous to see in the wild.

Fun fact!

Firefly squids, otherwise known as Watasenia scintillans, are the only species of their genus. They’re a part of the larger group of Enoploteuthidae, a family of extremely small squids with photophores on their bodies. There’s about 40 species in the entire family in total, and four separate genera.