Squid A Day

I must have missed that section in the What to Expect books on how to react when your child comes home from school with a Ziploc bag filled with squid parts in his backpack.Thus begins an entertaining account by Beth Braccio in the Chicago Parent about all the exciting things her son has brought home from school. To her credit, she didn't immediately make him throw the bag of squid away:

An interesting fellow is doing an interesting thing. Scott Cassell aims to "raise awareness around the detrimental state of the ocean along the Southern California coastline" with a specific focus on the decline of sharks. Says Cassell,If we lose an apex predator from the food chain it causes other species to then have population explosions. For example, Sharks and Tuna are the natural predators of the Humboldt squid. If you kill off all the sharks, the squid population (each female can potentially have 20 million "babies") will begin to overpower the part of the food chain below them. They will eat anything and everything.

I know I keep talking about the incredible unpredictability of squids, but it's an endlessly fascinating topic! Every time you think you've got them figured out, they surprise you--and I'd say that goes for pretty much all squid species.Of course, I'm particularly familiar with the Humboldt squid's propensity for perplexity. For a while, they were so abundant off California that sport fishermen were reeling them in as fast as they could throw jigs in the water. Now, the squid have disappeared.

The LA Times has a really wonderful story about a small island off the coast of South Korea and an old woman who makes her living there by selling dried squid.I can't be sure what species of squid, but almost certainly an ommstrephid--the squid family that includes our friend the Humboldt squid. Probably Ommastrephes or Todarodes, based on geography.

I've seen cephalopods pop up in a few video games here and there, but The Game Bakers' Squids is the first one that looks both adorable and fun enough that I want to play it. (Which is a big deal, for me--I don't make time to play video/computer games the way I used to. Though, there was that time a few months ago when we had some friends over and played through the original 16-color version of Monkey Island . . . )

Police blotters can make fun reading, especially when they show up in your news alert for "squid," and especially when they use the word "caper":The caper began when someone used blue spray paint to draw a large squid or octopus on the northwest side of the Warner Park Community Recreation Center, 1425 Troy Drive.Squid or octopus? Why didn't they call a marine biologist to identify it? Anyway, a few days later the police were investigating the suspect of a hit-and-run crash in his house:

From a certain perspective, it's really weird that we manage fisheries in these discrete little units based on species. There are swordfish permits, swordfish boats, swordfish managers. There are squid permits, squid boats, squid managers. And so on.But species don't exist in neat boxes. That's the fundamental truth behind ecology. When you go out to catch one species, you're bound to run across several other species as well, and even the most carefully designed fishing gear will occasionally catch something it wasn't supposed to.

It's about squid and it's about sperm, and apparently the combination is sexy enough to get this research onto the BBC, MSNBC, Discover, and more. (Not to malign io9--that's actually where I first read about it.)

This post is going to be a bit gruesome. If you're not interested, go look at something cute instead. That's what I would do.Well, the head and body (mantle) are undeniably separated. Was the head removed from the body or the body removed from the head? Does it matter?There are really two questions here: (1) does separating the head from the mantle kill the squid and, if so, how quickly/painfully? (2) is the squid still alive when soy sauce is used to activate its muscles in odori-don?

Squids, as I may have mentioned before, are the snacks of the sea. Everyone who can eat them, does. Whales. Sharks. Birds. Other squids. They're swimming tubes of protein with no scales or bones to get in the way, and they're highly abundant. If you're any kind of marine predator, squids are the perfect prey.But one has to wonder: if squids fuel everything from albacore to albatross, what fuels the squids? Sure, they'll eat each other, but the ouroboros model doesn't really work that well for ecology.

I thought I'd write a compelling story about Humboldt squid and one of their favorite prey items, the lightfish Vinciguerria. These two creatures are quite the dynamic duo: one flashing like a red-and-white strobe, the other studded with glowing photophores. They clearly belong at some kind of deep-sea rave.But I'm riding a train, and I keep getting distracted by the scenery. I can't help it; I love the California hills!By the fifth false start, I realized that if I wanted to post anything today, it would have to be light and fluffy. So here is a picture I took of a juvenile Humboldt squid in an aquarium:

Is it possible to bring up a squid-related topic about which I have nothing to say? So far, the answer seems to be no.I'm not sure if I should be proud--or find some more hobbies.Anyhoo, today's blog-babble is tipped off by odori-don, the dancing squid rice bowl. (That linked article includes a video, for the morbidly curious.)