Ommastrephes bartramii is a kind of short life cycle species which has the characteristics of dying immediately after spawning, and the stock size entirely depends on the recruitment, while the recruitment mainly depends on its mortality in the early life stage.Ommastrephes bartramii is an important economic cephalopod, and is widely distribute in the North Pacific Ocean, therefore understanding the progress of the early life history of Ommastrephes bartramii thoroughly can play an important role in predicting the changes of recruitment in the next year. For this purpose, this paper mainly reviews and discusses the distribution of paralarvae and juveniles of Ommastrephes bartramii, feeding, age and growth, natural mortality, and also the correlation between the environment and recruitment. This paper also gives a brief introduction to the progress of embryonic development and morphological changes of larvae. The early life history which is from spawning to hatching and embryonic development to grow to be larvae is a very important and least understood stage. Future research should focus on this stage by studying the growth and death of the larvae and the influence of environment changes on the squid hatching success, as well as the stock recruitment.