Entries Tagged "squid"

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Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Poaching in Argentina

Squid fishing turns into an international incident back in February 2005:

A Taiwanese flagged jigger allegedly poaching in the South Atlantic was arrested by the Argentine Coast Guard after intimidating fire. This is the second incident in a week.

According to Argentine sources the 35 crew jigger was detected operating in the Isla Rasa area, 199 miles offshore Comodoro Rivadavia, and refused to stop engines when approached by a Coast Guard vessel.

Primary reports indicate that “Chich Man 1” was transporting 3,700 boxes of 12,5 kilos each of frozen squid, plus another 68 of fresh squid stored on deck.

When the jigger instead of obeying orders tried to flee the Argentine Coast Guard vessel fired intimidating shots. She was then boarded by a party of Argentine sailors and is currently being escorted to Comodoro Rivadavia where the captain will face charges of illegal fishing.

Less that a week ago another Taiwanese jigger, “Hsien Hua 6” was caught red-hand poaching in the same area and was by ARA Guerrico and escorted to Puerto Deseado.

Posted on March 17, 2006 at 3:32 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid in Australia

On television:

According to juicy folklore and loose legend, for centuries, the inky waters of our deepest oceans have been home to that most mysterious of marine creatures—the giant squid. Well, as we speak, visitors to Melbourne’s aquarium can take a gander at the real thing, a 7m-long squid, caught in New Zealand and frozen in a block of ice.

For 30 years, almost obsessively, one real scientific character from across the Tasman has been chasing these elusive creatures and Ben Deacon caught up with him, hard at what’s clearly become his life’s work.

Watch the video here.

Posted on March 10, 2006 at 2:46 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid in London's Natural History Museum

There’s a 28-foot (8.62-meter) giant squid on display at the Natural History Museum in London:

It took several months to prepare the squid for display.

“The first stage was to defrost it; that took about four days. The problem was the mantle – the body – is very thick and the tentacles very narrow, so we had to try and thaw the thick mantle without the tentacles rotting,” Mr Ablett told the BBC News website.

The scientists did this by bathing the mantle in water, whilst covering the tentacles in ice packs, after which they injected the squid with a formol-saline solution to prevent it from rotting.

The team then needed to find someone to build a glass tank which could not only hold the huge creature, but could leave the squid accessible for future scientific research, and they decided to draw upon the knowledge of an artist famed for displaying preserved dead animals.

The website has a video. Here is another news story. Damien Hirst got involved in the defrosting.

Note that this squid is larger than the 25-foot specimen on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Posted on March 3, 2006 at 3:24 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Semi-Truck of Squid Overturns

Last year in California:

An 18-wheel semi-truck overturned east of Murphy Crossing Road on Riverside Drive on Wednesday morning, spilling 38,500 pounds of frozen squid and taking down a power pole, cutting electricity to about 1,100 people in the Aromas area.

[…]

The $22,600 load of squid, caught in Ventura, was packaged and frozen at Del Mar Seafoods at 331 Ford St., where it was loaded into Ramirez’s truck.

Posted on February 24, 2006 at 4:10 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Sex Life

News from a cephalopod conference:

The bizarre sex life of the giant squid is one of the topics at an international cephalopod conference in Hobart this week.

Marine biologists are continuing to unlock the secrets of the giant squid, saying the deep-sea monster may not be a cannibal as previously thought.

It was thought the species was cannibalistic when parts of a fellow giant squid were found in the stomach of a specimen caught off Tasmania’s west coast in 1999.

But New Zealand based marine biologist Steve O’Shea believes that was the result of some bizarre mating methods.

He says the creatures do not mean to eat each other but the females accidentally bite bits off of the males during mating.

Posted on February 17, 2006 at 4:04 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid in Tasmania

In 2002, a 60-foot long giant squid washed up on the beach in Tasmania.

Because of the low number of observations, scientists have struggled to build up a profile of the giant squid, discovering only in the last five years how it reproduces.

It is believed they rarely have an opportunity to mate, and live isolated lives, but it is still unknown where the squid fits on the food chain.

The giant squid is a carnivorous mollusk with a beak-like mouth strong enough to cut through a steel cable and its eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom—growing up to 45 centimeters (18 inches) wide.

The giant squid is believed to feed on, among other things, the world’s biggest animals with several eyewitness stories from fisherman who have seen the squid in fierce battles with whales.

Dead whales have been found washed up on beaches with large sucker marks on their bodies, apparently from squid attacks.

Posted on January 27, 2006 at 4:08 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging

It’s from last September, but it’s the biggest giant squid news in years—a live giant squid caught on camera:

In their efforts to photograph the huge cephalopod, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori have been using a camera and depth recorder attached to a long-line, which they lower into the sea from their research vessel.

Below the camera, they suspend a weighted jig—a set of ganged hooks to snag the squid—along with a single Japanese common squid as bait and an odour lure consisting of chopped-up shrimps.

At 0915 local time on 30 September 2004, they struck lucky. At a depth close to 1km in waters off Japan’s Ogasawara Islands, an 8m-long Architeuthis wrapped its long tentacles around the bait, snagging one of them on the jig.

Kubodera and Mori took more than 550 images of the giant squid as it made repeated attempts to detach itself.

The pictures show the squid spreading its arms, enveloping the long-line and swimming away in its efforts to struggle free.

Finally, four hours and 13 minutes after it was first snagged, the attached tentacle broke off, allowing the squid to escape. The researchers retrieved a 5.5m portion with the line.

See also this article from Nature.

Posted on January 13, 2006 at 2:17 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.