Squid A Day

This is a butterfish:NOAA describes it unflatteringly as a "small, bony foodfish." Butterfish live along the Atlantic coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland, and they've been fished commercially for some time, with predictable results:

José Marian, the author of this paper about sperm injection, very kindly and promptly provided me with a copy. I began reading with an enthusiasm which only increased as I proceeded through the article. It's short, clear, and tantalizing.

Squid sex is both discreet and discrete.Discreet, because usually the sexual organs remain hidden. The only visible activity looks more like a handshake than like intercourse, as the male uses one arm to pass sperm to the female.Discrete, because the sperm comes in neat, quantized packages rather than free-flowing semen. These packages are called spermatophores, and they're quite complex. In addition to a mass of sperm, they have a variety of tools for attaching themselves to the female's body.

My husband has an enormous head. Sometimes this concerns me, when I consider the degree to which skull size may have a genetic basis and the fact that we'll probably reproduce at some point. That has to fit through there? OW.But maybe I should be grateful. I'll certainly have an easier time of it than female Atlantic bobtail squid (Sepiola atlantica). These mamas, according to a recent study on their spawning behavior, can lay up to one and a half times their own body weight in eggs. That would be like me, at 125 pounds, producing 187.5 pounds of baby. WOW.

This a double whammy, a two-for-the-price-of-one, a joint review (for some value of the word review) of two books with the same title: Kraken.China Miéville's Kraken is a New Weird novel that tracks the adventures of London Natural History Museum curator Billy Harrow. The inexplicable theft of his prize Architeuthis specimen forces him into an other-London of magical knacks, squid cultists, gangsters, and impending Armageddon.

The Smithsonian has posted cool videos of Clyde Roper talking about his passion for the giant squid, Architeuthis. Two of the videos are short excerpts of an interview with Roper, and one is a ten-minute documentary with some very neat footage from Roper's squid-hunting expedition.

Have you ever found yourself wondering about the species identification of the molluscan muscle in your mouth? The answer can be as slippery as the animal.Accurate seafood labeling is a constant problem, largely due to the length of the supply chain. Customers have to trust what the restaurant or supermarket tells them, and the buyers for those businesses in turn have to trust what their suppliers say. This game of fish telephone can go around the world, as globalization shuttles seafood between distant markets.Among seafood, cephalopod labeling is some of the least informative. Often there's no attempt to get any more specific than "squid" or "octopus", and even those terms seem dubious when you realize how often people mix them up.

Covered in the popular media with the engaging headline Scientists discover how to make squid go completely berserk is a recent study about squid pheromones.Squid species of a particular family, Loliginidae, are famous for their spawning aggregations. They gather together in certain areas at certain times of the year, and the females lay eggs in elongate capsules attached to the seafloor. A cluster of capsules is often referred to as an "egg mop" and a collection of mops as an "egg bed." Stumbling upon on egg bed while diving can be a dramatic sight.

FIS (Fish Information and Services, the "most comprehensive website for the commercial fishing industry") has a run of recent squid news. Let's start with Illex argentinus, the Argentinian shortfin squid with a history of contention between fishers from Argentina and the Falkland Islands. After a 2009 crash, Illex rebounded somewhat in 2010 (possibly due to shifting environmental conditions), but so far the catch from the Falklands this year isn't looking good:

A new fossil cephalopod has turned up in the news! It's funny cuz I was just pondering ammonites recently."It is a new species of squid, totally new, that has not been seen in
other parts of the world," paleontologist Klaus Honninger told AFP. Honninger,
director of the Meyer-Honninger Paleontology Museum in the northern
city of Chiclayo, said the fossil was a large cephalopod of the extinct
Baculite species, known for their long straight shells.

Then you really should consider attending Euroceph, a new meeting this year with the tagline:Cephalopod Biology Research in the 21st Century - A European Perspective.We would like to remind all of you that the meeting is aimed to review current cephalopod research from a European perspective and specifically examine the potential of cephalopods as ‘model animals’ to address a range of research questions from molecular neuroscience to ecology.

So I guess squid are doing really well this year.It's estimated that around-the-world squid in mass outweighs the human population. . . . Along the coast of California, the squid season has been abundant . . . Certain squid are booming thanks to a slight warming of sea temperatures, in places like Alaska and Siberia . . . There's also been a boom in Humboldt squid along the Pacific coastline ranging from California to Peru.