Humboldt Squid - Native To Mexico - Showing Up In Puget Sound

[hatrack]

Dan Penttila has been walking Washington's beaches for more than 50 years, made a career of studying small fish born there, and knows pretty much what to expect. But he could hardly believe it when one day in January, he stumbled over a squid, a species normally found in the warm waters off Mexico and Southern California: the Humboldt squid.

The marine scientist steeped in the Puget Sound ecosystem knew the creature only from The Discovery Channel. "I just happened to glance down at the waterline, and there it was," said Penttila, a biologist at the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "The head was mostly gone and the tentacles were just stumps. Something had eaten it, but it had been fairly recently because when I picked it up, the flesh responded to my touch."

EDIT

Hundreds of Humboldt squids washed ashore in southwestern Washington in October 2004. They first appeared off the Washington coast in August of that year, when the ocean was considerably warmer than usual. At the same time, Humboldts turned up as far north as Sitka, Alaska. Before 1997, when the squid was first seen off Oregon, the species had never been documented north of San Francisco. Humboldt squids are little known to scientists. They spend the daytime at great depths and are hard to study.

The squid Penttila found turned out to be a juvenile. Though they can grow to 6 feet and weigh 100 pounds, this one was about half that size, indicating that it probably hatched last spring. And that has Penttila and other scientists curious: Did anyone else see one of these? And when those squids showed up in 2004, did they lay eggs somewhere?


EDIT

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/264561_squid28.html

[kenny blankenship]

1. Damn Mexican squid, coming up here, taking our plankton!

[Horse with no Name]

2. .....

:spray:
You owe me a keyboard.

[kenny blankenship]

6. And I bet they make no attempt to assimilate either:

[hatrack]

7. ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!! Brilliant!

:toast:

[ingac70]

4. Eating the plankton American squids won't eat....

:eyes:

[ingac70]

3. Those things are mean!

And bite!

I watched a special on them on Discovery, and the Mexican guys that fish for these things had scars all over them from where they fell in the water at different times.

Sometimes the little bastards will pull you down!

[tatertop]

9. fast and agile they have been known to pack attack researchers

At six feet, 100+ pounds, me no likey.

Puget Sound Octopus, good. Humboldt Squid, not so nice.

[Horse with no Name]

5. I am curious

Does this mean that the oceans are warming up and making it habitable for these creatures further North?
Is it an anomaly? or is it a sign of things to come?

[hatrack]

8. As oceans warm all kinds of things are heading north

Cod fisheries in the North Sea (or I should say what's left of them) are moving north, and they're being replaced by bream and other warm-water species from the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay.

It's all over the place, not just the Pacific Northwest.

[Horse with no Name]

10. That was another question

This will destroy the lobster industry on the East Coast.

[hatrack]

11. Or push it up to New Brunswick - or spread new lobster diseases . . .

The possibilities are, at the risk of sounding like a credit card commercial, limitless.

[freethought]

12. This is not a good sign.

I traveled to Baja Peninsula 2 years ago to a lodge that specialized in sport fishing. There are actually charter boats that specialize in catching these squid, they are large, fast, fight hard and are vicious. What is even more amazing is that they almost seem to display a kind of intelligence not found in sharks. They are even cannibalistic. Every once in a while one of the pangas would come back with one of these squid that had been hooked and landed by the guests.

The top predator in Puget Sound is likely the Orca and that population is in trouble because they are dying off from exposure to toxic substances. Add the Humboldt as a new source of competition and we could be facing other problems.

[eppur_se_muova]

13. Squid are favorite food of sperm whales. Maybe orcas will like them too?

Or maybe orcas could get pushed out by sperm whales?