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An Open Letter To Squid

Dear Squid of the World,Excuse me. What is this? I have been your friend and advocate for years...

With This Devoted Squid Mama, I Bid Farewell

Squid typically die after spawning. Their orphaned eggs are left alone in the cold brine to develop...

ICAD 2012: Top Ten Cephalopod Stories From The Last Year

To celebrate International Cephalopod Awareness Days, I decided to comb through all the cephalopod...

Scavenging Cephalopods: Mild-Mannered Vampire Squid Just Want To Eat Waste

A couple of weeks ago ago, a debate about the existence of scavenging cephalopods broke out on...

Danna Staaf

Cephalopods have been rocking my world since I was in grade school. I pursued them through a BA in marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by a PhD dissertation at... Read More »

The Circle of Life--Squid Style

Dec 26 2011 | 0 comment(s)

The Jaffe Laboratory at UC San Diego posted some lovely videos of market squid mating aggregations off La Jolla in Southern California. Check them out here.

The first one is just classic: murky green water, and a seemingly endless field of squid mating, spawning, and dying. The piles of "egg fingers" they've produced hint at the enormity of the next generation--most of which will be eaten before they can take part in their own orgy.

Searching For Squid In The Sea Soundscape

Dec 21 2011 | 0 comment(s)

Do sperm whales use sonar to stun giant squid? In a word: maybe. I delved quite enthusiastically into the topic last year, and came out tantalized and frustrated by limited evidence.

So I was very excited to see an article in the Smithsonian called The Sperm Whale's Deadly Call. Is this new research, finally showing once and for all that sperm whales knock out their prey by very loud shouting?

"Mini-Shark" Squid (a.k.a. Diamondback Squid)

Dec 19 2011 | 4 comment(s)

I missed reporting it when it happened at the end of November, but a group of Indian fishermen caught a rather larger squid than they were expecting:

This rare squid, caught by the fishermen of King Jesus boat, looks like a mini shark. It is about three feet in length and two-and-a-half feet in breadth.

The location was the port of Malpe, on the Arabian Sea, and the species is undeniably Thysanoteuthis rhombus, the diamondback squid.

. . . And Stay Closed!

Dec 18 2011 | 6 comment(s)

To recap: in 2011, the California market squid fishery caught tons of squid (118,000 tonnes to be exact) and was all set to close. However, some fishers noted the continued abundance of squid in the ocean and petitioned to keep catching.

Then Oceana spoke up on behalf of the squid, with an argument neatly summarized by Geoff Shester, Oceana's California program director, as Protect Calamari, Save the Whales:

Slow Fishing For Squid In The Adriatic

Dec 15 2011 | 6 comment(s)

Slow Food's Michele Rumiz has posted a ruminative piece about squid fishing on Unije, a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea:

Every November, the island calls its aficionados to fish squid (called lignjada in Croatian). . . . No sounding leads, nets or electronic devices: they fish using togna - line, and totanara as bait. This is why the more than 20 fishermen involved could manage to fish only a little more than 50 kg of squid in 4 hours. It might seem like a lot, but it's nothing compared to an industrial fishery, which would get the same result in a few minutes with a much smaller crew.

A Neon Sign Of Climate Change

Dec 14 2011 | 1 comment(s)

Squids are mercurial, unpredictable creatures of extremes.

Call them abundant, call them quite rare
It depends on the climate--the sea and the air
One species expands, another contracts
These are the data, these are the facts
Sometimes it feels like they're growing too fast
But it helps them respond and it's why they can last
Through environmental change . . .