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.

The second one answers the question of what happens to the dead parents. Marine predators of all kinds love to reap this easy harvest, but the one we see here is particularly unexpected: a cormorant, using its wings to swim underwater! Cormorants are excellent divers and swimmers, and often go even deeper than this for their food.

But let's not end on the thought of dead parents. Here is a video about the beautiful babies that will hatch in a few weeks (it's the same one I blogged about before):