In La Jolla in 2009, a small stranding event occurred around the same time as an equally small earthquake. But the squid actually started stranding a few days before the earthquake, deflating the much-hyped idea that the earthquake caused the stranding.
This year in Japan,
Squid fishermen in Tokushima Prefecture hauled in a bumper catch just before the massive March 11 earthquake, just as they did right before the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, leading to suggestions the phenomenons could be connected.This brings up so many questions! Why would fishermen catch so many squid? Are there actually more squid in the water right before a quake? Are they easier to catch for some reason?
And of course, the real question: is the correlation between high squid catches and earthquakes even real? It's based on entirely anecdotal evidence and extremely small sample size: two quakes, to be exact. And there are other, more scientific, explanations for the abundant catch of squid:
"The sea temperature was warmer than usual last year, which helped the hatching rate of squid eggs," an official of the institute said. The institute believes squid in Osaka Bay and the eastern part of the Seto Inland Sea headed south in search of warmer water in the Kuroshio current when winter arrived, and massed in waters between the Kii Peninsula, northeastern Shikoku and Hyogo Prefecture's Awajishima island--making for a bumper catch in that area.Even if there were some real connection between squid catches and earthquakes, I have to wonder: is it really any use as an early warning system? I expect there are many times when the catch is high, but there are no earthquakes. Would you want to accept the cost of evacuating coastal towns and villages every time there's a bumper crop of squid?
It also bears noting that Tokushima is 600 miles from Sendai, the city nearest the quake. So the squid system is not particularly accurate in its localization.
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