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Squid's mystery deepens after 1,000 wash ashore! |
 Article Source
 The mystery of the giant squid caught off B.C.’s coast has deepened after the washed-up bodies of more than 1,000 Humboldt jumbo flying squid were found on the weekend near Washington state’s Long Beach.
Dosidicus gigas, which grow up to two metres long and can weigh 50 kilograms, normally live in waters between Southern California and the tip of South America. But this year, for the first time in scientific history, the squid have ventured as far north as Alaska.
A B.C. salmon sport fisherman, using herring bait, hooked one earlier this month off Port Renfrew. The unique catch is now pickled in formaldehyde at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria.
"It’s an unprecedented situation as far as we’re aware," James Cosgrove, the museum’s manager of natural history, said yesterday. "There’s never been scientific confirmation of Humboldt squid north of San Francisco, except for the El Nino event of 1997, and that one came up as far as central Oregon."
Earlier this month, Maple Bay sports fisherman Gudy Gudmundseth, 59, and a buddy hooked one of the fiery red squid on a salmon trolling trip on Swiftsure Bank off the west coast of Vancouver Island. At first, Gudmundseth thought he’d caught a halibut, then he believed it was a salmon. Whatever was on the end of the line was a good fighter.
When Gudmundseth saw the tentacles, he thought it was an octopus, but that didn’t make much sense because the men were trolling at a depth of 42 metres and the ocean floor was at least 80 m down. "As it got closer to the boat, I thought, ’C....t, we’ve got a big squid,’" the lifelong fisherman said last night. "It fought pretty hard in the net even."
Gudmundseth tried to extract the hooks that had caught in its beak and eyes, but realized the squid would probably not survive. The 20-kg squid reacted by firing its tentacles at Gudmundseth, all the time alternating in colour from bright red, brilliant white and brown. "It kind of just waved [its tentacles] around and shot them around," he said. After putting the squid on ice, Gudmundseth called it a day. He later gave his odd catch to the museum.
Cosgrove said the discovery in the North Pacific of Humboldt squid, named after South America’s Humboldt current, has astounded scientists. There’s speculation, said Cosgrove, that El Nino has something to do with drawing them northward. Water temperatures off the B.C. coast this summer were two-degrees C higher than average, the warmest on record.
"The year 1997-98 was a fairly big El Nino event and we’ve got an El Nino going on now, which we assume is the reason that these guys have come up the coast rather than going down to South America," said Cosgrove. Washington state officials report that between 1,000 and 1,500 washed ashore on the Long Beach Peninsula on the weekend.
Cosgrove said the discovery is confirmation that thousands of squid have spent their time off the Washington and B.C. coasts between early August and early October. Squid are migratory and follow schools of fish, their natural prey. Once a squid hooks on to a fish with the sharp teeth inside its suckers, it has little chance of escape
The Humboldt squid is smaller than two other giant squid that can be found in B.C. waters. The North Pacific giant squid, Moroteuthis robusta, live in the Bering Sea, the North Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Alaska can grow up to 270 kg and span 10 m. Even larger is the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, which can grow to 17.7 m and weigh 880 kg.
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