Available wild-caught, these marine cephalopods have thick, dark browny-green bodies with long side fins running almost their full length, 8 shorter arms and 2 longer tentacles. They are commonly found in nearshore coastal waters around Australia’s northern coast from northern NSW to south of Shark Bay in WA; they also occur on offshore reefs to at least 100m. .
They tend to gather near the seabed during the day and spread out at night throughout the water, coming to the surface to feed. They are mainly caught by jigging (using lights to attract them to the water’s surface at night), but are also a bycatch of Prawn trawling and inshore net fisheries off northern Australia.
‘Calamari’ is the Italian word for ‘Squids’, but it also refers to those species of squids whose side fins run the full length of their bodies as opposed to those with relatively shorter side fins.