Entries Tagged "squid"

Page 87 of 97

Friday Squid Blogging: A Moaning Baby Giant Squid

From 1000 Days Non-Stop at Sea:

Last evening we were lying down on the pilothouse bunk discussing some technical problems we were having, when we heard the fishing line go out. ” That’s not a fish.” I said. The line went out too slowly and we were only going 2.5 knots, hardly fish catching speed. Reid went to reel in the line like he usually does in the evenings. Two minutes later he says, “There’s a fish! Bring me my headlamp.” I felt around for the headlamp in the darkness of the pilothouse and rush outside with it in hand. By this time, he knows it’s not a regular fish. “Shine the light right here!” he says while using both hands to reel in the line. I point the light in that direction. Something Big was coming out of the water moaning a low pitched wailing sound. Fish don’t moan. They squeak every now and then, but they don’t moan. I had no idea what it could be. Reid didn’t know either and many thoughts ran through our heads as to what we might be pulling in. Was it a mammal? A mermaid? An alien? We strained our eyes to see. There were some stars out, but no moon had risen to provide any light, so the water was a gurgling blackness that was easier to hear than see. I wasn’t sure exactly where to direct the light, but that low wailing sound was freaking me out. Picture pulling in a big heavy unknown Thing from the deep dark ocean at night and it’s crying. It hit the deck with a heavy squishy sound. It was hard to see anything in the darkness. I finally figured out where to put the light. We see a whole bunch of tentacles curling and waving and a round body about four inches in diameter and the continued moaning. We both realize at the same time it was a squid about four feet long, though its whole body wasn’t onboard yet. Now I’ve had calamari. They’re usually about five inches long, an inch in diameter, and cut into four pieces. This was not calamari. It was dark, who knew how high and far that thing could jump in an effort to get away. I didn’t want it in my lap, so I kept backing away on the yoga platform, until I realized I had to keep shining the light on the thing, still eerily moaning, so I crawled forward again. I swear I was so terrified. Somehow, it freed itself from the line and splashed back into the water. I don’t know who was more grateful that it got away, me or the squid. I calmed down a bit after it went back into the water. Reid was disappointed at the time, but later he admitted, “I don’t know what I would have done with a huge squid this time of day.” On my part, I’ll try not to think of those long moaning sounds too much.

Posted on September 28, 2007 at 4:59 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Whale Eating Giant Squid

Caught on film, first time ever:

“We looked hard and saw a tentacle of a squid hanging from its mouth and there were other pieces of squid stuck to the whale’s body. It made a number of brusque movements on its side in the water to free the tentacle to eat it – and there we were filming and photographing it all.”

He reckoned the squid could have been some five metres long, a comparatively modest size for the species. Examples have been found which reach 20 metres in length and weigh in at a thousand kilos!

Posted on September 21, 2007 at 4:05 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Controlled Evolution of Sonar in Whales and Dolphins

Maybe:

Behind the sailor’s lore of fearsome battles between sperm whale and giant squid lies a deep question of evolution: How did these leviathans develop the underwater sonar needed to chase and catch squid in the inky depths?

Now, two evolutionary biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, claim that, just as bats developed sonar to chase flying insects through the darkness, dolphins and other toothed whales also developed sonar to chase schools of squid swimming at night at the surface.

Because squid migrate to deeper, darker waters during the day, however, toothed whales eventually perfected an exquisite echolocation system that allows them to follow the squid down to that “refrigerator in the deep, where food is available day or night, 24/7,” said evolutionary biologist David Lindberg, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and coauthor of a new paper on the evolution of echolocation in toothed whales published online July 23 in advance of its publication in the European journal Lethaia.

Posted on September 14, 2007 at 4:24 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.