The deep-sea octopods are in both octopod suborders, the Cirrata with three families, eight genera and 29 species, and the Incirrata with three octopodid subfamilies, 11 genera and 48 species. In addition, some families in the Incirrata contain deep-sea pelagic species. Only benthic or "near benthic" species are dealt with in this paper. Among the Cirrata, only the Cirroteuthidae contain species with a multi-ocean distribution. Cirrothauma murrayi is possibly cosmopolitan, occuring from polar seas to the depths of the tropics. Cirroteuthis muelleri has an amphiboreal distribution in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. In the monotypic Stauroteuthidae, Stauroteuthis syrtensis is known only from the temperate western North Atlantic. The Opisthoteuthidae are represented by two genera. Opisthoteuthis with 10 species is the shallowest-dwelling of the cirrates, with all but three species living between 100 and 1000m. The genus is distributed throughout the oceans except in high latitudes. Grimpoteuthis, with 13 species, occurs in all oceans but no species is recorded from more than one ocean. A specimen has been trawled from 7279m.
The deep-sea Incirrata are found among three subfamilies of the Octopodidae. In the Bathypolypodinae, Bathypolypus has five species in the Atlantic, one off Japan, one in the Indian Ocean; Teretoctopus has two species in the Indian Ocean, and Benthoctopus has approximately 15 species distrubuted worldwide from the Antarctic to the Arctic, with individual species restricted to single oceans. Among the Pareledoninae, Pareledone, Vosseledeone and Velodona are found only in the southern hermisphere, and Tetracheledone only in the western North Atlantic. Pareledone is the most speciose and has a circum-Antarctic distribution; the monotypic Vosseledone is known only from Brazil; the two species of Velodona occur of East Africa. Among the Graneledoninae, Graneledone has two species in the Southern Ocean, one in the North Atlantic, one in the North pacific and one in the Panamic region. Thaumeledone and Bentheledone are confined to the Southern Ocean
