In the steampunk surroundings of Brighton’s underground Sea Life Centre, four marine biology experts competed for their preferred cephalopod to reign supreme.

Kerry Perkins donned her homemade nautilus hat to cheer for this mysterious ancient survivor, rising and sinking hundreds of metres in its buoyant shell.

Passionate cuttlefish connoisseur Jay Culligan enthused about the extraordinary skin layers which allow the cuttlefish to change colour and pattern in under a second.

Simon Watt, from Inside Nature’s Giants, held forth about the many gifts squid have given humans, from the sepia ink that helps painters and colours pasta to the creative gift of nightmares, courtesy of the colossal squid and Cthulhu.

Russell Arnott’s up-tempo octopus talk journeyed from Henry Lee’s 1875 book The Octopus: The Devil-Fish Of Fiction And Of Fact to moving gifs of transforming and escaping octopus, like a Tumblr blog come to life.

Lacking stage lights, the presenters were illuminated by the changing rainbow-coloured lights, while audio problems meant that much of the first presenter’s speech was inaudible over the tinkling classical theme soundtracking the pool of skates.

However, the interested audience of 20-somethings cheered happily and obediently in the higher register that, we were told, wouldn’t alarm the fish.

Four stars