Squid A Day

Well! The last day of the squid fertilization workshop was just as exciting, in its own way, as Sunday's fishing excusion.   The workshop's dozen participants hail from Mexico, Peru, Brazil, USA, Germany, Russia, and Spain. But our passion for cephalopod reproduction is as pure as our backgrounds are diverse. That's right, we are all obsessed with squid sex. So obsessed that we will make ourselves late for lunch with concerns about the chemistry of egg masses, and debate ommastrephid paralarval nutrition well into the night. Yesterday morning we showed each other videos of egg masses and baby squid. We cooed over Susana's paralarvae and applauded Sakurai's shockingly spherical egg masses.  

The dissertation is complete, the post-dissertation vacation is finished, and Squid-A-Day is back, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! And oh boy, have I got news for you.It's no accident that Squid-A-Day is emerging from its PhD chrysalis (note to self: nice analogy. come back to it later) just as we enter the month of October. As the 10th month of the year, it is a friend to the squid, with their ten appendages. But as its Latinate name contains the number 8, it goes the extra step to acknowledge that the squid's appendages are composed of only eight arms, and two specialized tentacles. Thus, October + Squid = Celebration!

First of all, yes, I know not to expect any better of the Express. But it's coming up on a year since Squid Says: What's for Dinner? Probably Not You, so it must be time for another rant.I just can't help taking the bait, even though this is clearly trolling:Millions of killer giant squid are not only devouring vast amounts of fish they have even started attacking humans . . . Hunting in 1,000-strong packs the giant squid can out-swim and out-think fish.

A couple months shy of a year ago, I was raving about the news that a new giant squid documentary was in the works.Guess what? It's still in the works!If this weren't so deadly serious (joke) I'd be laughing my head off about the meta-meta-reporting. I'm writing a blog post . . . about an article . . . about a documentary . . . that hasn't been filmed yet. And you're still reading? You should probably just go outside a watch a tree grow. But wait, before you go, a pop quiz: Can squid hear?

Remember the octopus that stole a diver's camera and filmed itself swimming away? Ha ha ha, very nice--but it's only a few minutes of footage of only one octopus. Can you top that, Humboldt squid? Why yes, I think you can!

What's the best way to swim?If "best" is the same as "tried and recommended by the majority of fish," then the answer is easy. Think of your basic sardine beating its tail back and forth propel itself forward, and you've got it. This undulatory swimming is used by aquatic animals from the size of a pencil eraser to the size of a house, and it is by far the dominant method of locomotion in the ocean (at macroscopic scales, at least).But there is one whopping exception to the rule: squid, of course. Although they do have fins, and various species undulate these fins to various degrees, they are only a supplement to the real thrust: jet propulsion. The squid sucks water into its body, and squirts it out through a funnel.

Yes, I am still here! Did you miss me? You totally missed me! Maybe just a little.I emerge from my thesis-writing cave to spread the word that teuthologists Rui Rosa and Brad Seibel--who, incidentally, are both a hoot to hang out with on a boat in the middle of the Sea of Cortez--have published a new study on squid metabolism. And not just any squid metabolism. COLOSSAL SQUID METABOLISM.The BBC reports:

Possibly some of the more hotly contested fishing grounds in the world occur around the Falkland Islands, just off the Atlantic coast of South America. The islands themselves are a point of international contention, and the ocean comes right along for the ride, since fishing accounts for about half of the Falklands' economy. If you're not familiar with it, this history of the Falklands/Maldivas makes for a fascinating read. The short version is that the United Kingdom and Argentina have been fighting over it, and so far the UK has won.

So it looks like Humboldt squid don't kill divers after all. At least, they haven't done so yet.

Now that the latest battle in the invertebrate wars seems to have died down a bit (victors inconclusive, of course), I can post a list of cool things about cephalopods that have put them in the news lately, without it necessarily having to serve as ammunition. (---WOW, that was the most awkward sentence ever, but guess who DOES NOT CARE, because she has been locked in a basement for a week writing her dissertation! HI!)1. They used to rule the world. As I'm sure Dr. Fuchs discussed in his lecture:

So, I was going to blog about the new baby giant octopus (complete with webcam!) at the Smithsonian. But, it's not really a squid.Then I was going to talk about sperm whales collectively hunting squid, and point out that the BBC made a geographic error. (The study was conducted in the Gulf of California, on the Pacific side, not in the Gulf of Mexico, which is on the Atlantic side.) But that's really about mammals, which is just not what I do here.

What to look for in the next decade, as far as squid are concerned? Certainly new species will be discovered and described. Fisheries will probably spring up for species that have never been fished before. These will boom, and probably bust. But the real question on everyone's mind: will we have a giant squid in an aquarium by 2020?I don't know about you but, personally, I can't get enough of giant squids: great Routemaster-sized carnivores with bone-snapping beaks, eyes the size of dinner plates and churning tentacles.