Warning lights of the sea (Large warm water squid becoming common off of California)

Warning lights of the sea
By Pete Thomas, Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2007

Robert Carbajal shows Humboldt squid, taken in Southland waters.
(Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
Mar 9, 2007


Capt. Ricky Carbajal brings up a Humboldt squid, caught by an angler aboard the New Del Mar. Little is known about these jumbo squid because they thrive at depths of 650 to 3,000 feet. They have a life span of less than two years.
(Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
Mar 9, 2007



Robert Carbajal exposes raptor-like beak of a Humboldt squid.
(Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
Mar 9, 2007


Aboard the New Del Mar — A long night scouring a deep, dark ocean is proving uneventful — until the luminous red dots begin drifting across the sonar screen.

Banter in the wheelhouse suddenly stops and grubby fingers point to the dots clustered along the bottom, as if trying to locate the enemy.

On deck, a fisherman lurches forward as his rod dips seaward. Another fisherman is jerked against the rail, then another.

"What else can it be?" says Capt. Ricky Carbajal of the vessel New Del Mar, which is pitching in a brisk wind, five miles beyond the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

It can only be the same bizarre denizen that has been turning up in large numbers throughout Southland waters: Dosidicus gigas, a.k.a. Humboldt, or jumbo, squid.

It is a colossal cephalopod that reaches 7 feet long, can weigh more than 100 pounds, and jets through the water at speeds up to 25 mph.

It has probing arms and tooth-lined tentacles, a raptor-like beak and an insatiable craving for flesh — any kind of flesh, even that of humans.

It shows up briefly off California every four or five years, spurred by a warm current or some other anomaly, providing a boon for sportfishing businesses.

But amid this latest influx, to points as far north as Bodega Bay, there is a deepening concern among scientists that Humboldt squid are entrenching themselves off California, and may expand northward, eating their way through fisheries as they go. The same thing is happening in the Southern Hemisphere, where squid are being blamed for depleting the hake fishery off Chile.

more:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-squid26mar26,0,6983714,full.story

This was WAAAAAAY north of their usual range.

They like to attack people, too, from what I hear.