The individual was found in Japan’s Toyama Bay.  Interestingly, this is the sixteenth Giant Squid sighting in the last year in Toyoma Bay.  In some regards, this is not surprising.  Toyoma Bay serves as the head of a deep canyon axis. The Giant Squid is cosmopolitan in the world’s ocean but as Guerra et al. show the squid appears mostly in areas with submarine canyons that cut across the continental shelf. These canyons provide areas of high productivity including fishing grounds humans and squids alike often exploit.

Why the recent increase in sightings in Toyama Bay?  Seeing a Giant Squid in shallow water undoubtedly indicates the individual is sick or injured.  The Giant Squid’s blood is poor at oxygen transfer making them particularly vulnerable to lowered oxygen, warming, and acidification.  Heat speeds an animal’s metabolism.  Because of their energy requirements and oxygen needs, Giant squid must stick to cooler waters.  Indeed, it is hypothesized their global distribution in the oceans is limited by warm temperature barriers.  Guerra et al. also demonstrate that strandings of Giant Squid in Newfoundland were always associated with rises in ocean bottom temperature.

Nonetheless, the video of the squid, only the third, is the best quality and detail yet of a living Giant Squid.  The individual is probably still young, measuring 3.7 metres (about 12 feet) long, is small.  Most of known individuals of Giant Squids measure well above this.  Indeed, 50% of measured Giant Squids are above 7.5 meters in length, nearly double of the Toyoma Bay individual.

The post New Video of Giant Squid Surfaces first appeared on Deep Sea News.

What did I learn? Well, as hinted at in the title of this post, female squid can acquire testicles on command (sort of – female market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) can control the coloring on a specific white stripe that gives the appearance of testicles on their body. So they kind of just paint on their balls when needed. Link to original study is here.)

Secondly, some squid have “elbows”. Specifically, the show was talking about the creepy alien-looking Magnapinna (bigfin) squids that have been caught on camera hovering eerily in the water, while holding their tentacles at 90 degree angles.

So put on your yoga pants, grab your pumpkin spice latte, and listen to this fun segment from Wait Wait..Don’t Tell Me:

2001 squid that has elbows

The post “It’s like a deep-sea version of Truck Nuts” first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Wada, T., Kubodera, T., Yamada, M., & Terakado, H. (2015). First records of small-sized young giant squid Architeuthis dux from the coasts of Kyushu Island and the south-western Sea of Japan Marine Biodiversity Records, 8 DOI: 10.1017/S175526721500127X

The post Baby Giant Squids first appeared on Deep Sea News.

<sarcasm> Of course the Colossal Squid is a terrifying monster from the black, evil depths from the depths of the dark abyss.  They consume humans whole and terrorize babies.  If they don’t eat you, they steal will your soul and commit unthinkable acts with it. </sarcasm>

On another side note, I also find it interesting that some of news pieces include a quote from me.  None of these reporters have actually spoken with me rather they are quote mining from a press release from back in February.  Peculiar.

The post OMG Its A Monster From the Deep…Or It’s A Colossal Squid first appeared on Deep Sea News.

We’re still working out the kinks…and trust us, these new things can get pretty kinky (#TWSS). Bear with us as we build up our visual smorgasbord, and be sure to check out our initial smattering of pinboards:

• Invertebrate Love – All invertebrate pictures, all the time
• Giant Squid – This board needs no explanation
• Habitats of the Deep – Showcasing what the deep sea actually looks like; it ain’t all mud plains!
• Gadgets & Gear – Because “every now and then you just need to stare at some cold hard steel”
• Waves + Fluds = Physics, baby! – All the physical oceanography goodness you ever wanted
• Let’s get it on – Come on, what would DSN be without a Pinterest board on marine sex?
• Fish, sharks, and marine mammals – Well someone needs to grow a backbone around here.
• Marine research bucket list – A personal board for us Deeplings, to showcase our most wished-for research questions and field sites
• The ocean…from SPAAAACE! – Satellite images of the ocean are so awesome that they need their own board.
• Drink up me harties – A board about beer and other tipples we drink while blogging
• Conservation & Conversation – Upcoming events, breaking news, viral content

The post Announcing the DSN Pinterest empire! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The largest measured giant squid eye is 27 centimeters (10.63 inches), roughly the size of a large dinner plate. Whereas all giant squids don’t have goliath fine china size eyeballs, most are between 5-15 centimeters (~2-6 inches), their peepers are huge. The swordfish has roughly the same body size as a giant squid, yet its eye is just a third of the diameter.

Why?

Why are giant squid eyes giant?

Why are the eyes bigger than fish?

Last year scientists proposed that the gigantism of giant squid eyes was a novel adaptation to spot their main predator, the sperm whale [1].  Bigger eyes can take in more light and in general animals living in perpetual darkness, like those in caves and in the deep oceans, possess very large eyes.  However, as Ed Yong describe

“Using a mathematical model, they found that in the deep ocean, eyes suffer from a law of diminishing returns. Small eyes can see dramatically further if they grow a bit bigger. But once the pupil passes 2.5 centimetres, these improvements become tinier and tinier. Once the pupil reaches 3.5 centimetres, and the eye itself reaches 9 centimetres, there’s very little point in making it any bigger. And that’s exactly where fish have stopped. Even though the swordfish’s head is capable of holding a much larger eye, it doesn’t.”

From mathematical modeling, the reason for the giant squid’s large eye is that in the dark a pupil can easily pick up a large and dimly lit object…like your mom (sorry I couldn’t resist).  More seriously, a sperm whale disturbing bioluminescent organisms as it moves through the water would be an easy optical target for the giant squid.

But new work cast doubts on this idea.

First, let’s go back to the beginning.  How large is a giant squid’s eye? If you scale a smaller squid up to giant squid size proportions, would the eye be the same size as a giant squid?

This is key.

Think of it this way.  If you scaled a Chihuahua up to Great Dane size would its tongue be the same size as Great Dane?  When you make organisms larger all the individual parts must get larger too.

But does this account for all of the ocular size differences? If yes, then we need no special reason to account for the behemoth ocular awesomeness of giant squids.  The giant squid simply has a squid eye as big as it’s supposed to be for a squid.

Lars Schmitz and his team took measurements of body size and eye size for 87 squids. What they found was the eyes of giants and colossal squids were not out of proportion compared to other squids. For giant squids 98.8% and for colossal squid 100% fell within predictions based on other squids. In other words, these massive squids do no have unusually large eyes for their body size.  The authors of this recent study do note that other squids, particularly the bobtail squids, have much larger eyes than you would expect, mainly because their bodies are shortened relative to other squids.

Compared to fish, all squids have very large eyes.  This holds even if the fish and squid are the same size.  On average, Schmitz and his team found that squid have ~1.7 times the eye diameter of fish for any given body size.

The authors go a step further and reexamine the original eye model proposed last year.  Schmitz and colleagues used more accurate parameter estimates including a range of eye sizes of giant squids. They found that over similar distances that point and diffuse light sources could be detected equally well.  To restate, a giant squid can just as easily detect the diffuse light of large object like a sperm whale triggering tons of bioluminescent plankton as a small fish using bioluminescence.  It’s just as likely a squid uses its large eyes to hunt others as it is to prevent be hunted itself. At an eye diameter of 15 centimeters this distance is 80 meters (262 feet) and at 4 centimeters the distance is 50 meters (160 feet), roughly 2/3 and 1/2 the length of football field. So larger pupils are equally great at detecting small point flashes, large form illumination, and even large dark objects.

[1] Nilsson et al. A unique advantage for giant eyes in giant squid. Current Biology 2012, 22:1–6. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.02.031.

[2] Schmitz et al. Allometry indicates giant eyes of giant squid are not exceptional. BMC Evolutionary Biology 2013 13:45 doi. 10.1186/1471-2148-13-45

The post Why the giant squid eye? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

No doubt you have seen the Amazing Ocean Facts circulating around the web. It seems to be drawing renewed interest even though it cam out last year. Overall, I love the concept.  Humor, cartoons, ocean creatures, and some science. Yes more please!  However, I have to shot at National Geographic all because I take size seriously.

In the above cartoon the Colossal Squid is stated to be twice the length of school bus.  The average length of your standard school bus is around 45 feet long.  So according to this comic a Colossal Squid is 90 feet long. I mentioned in my other post about the sizes of Giant Squids that the longest recorded specimen was 42 feet long, 3 feet shy of a single school bus.  No here is the kicker.  Giant Squids are longer than Colossal Squids.

Steve O’Shea one of the world’s leading experts on Big Ass Squids has this to say.

On April 1, 2003 the popular press was first alerted to the Colossal Squid, a.k.a. Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, although this species has been known to the scientific community since 1925, after it was described from two arm (brachial) crowns recovered from sperm whale stomachs (Robson 1925). We have located 11 further reports in which adult and subadult specimens have been described, and are aware of at least 7 further, similarly sized specimens that have yet to be reported. Juveniles of this species are not uncommon from surface waters to ~1000m depth….This species attains the greatest weight, but not necessarily greatest length of all squid species, and is known to attain a mantle length of at least 2.5m.

A newer specimen caught since Steve wrote the above is the Te Papa Museum Museum tank specimen that I’ve seen in person. It measures in at an actual total length on the 5.4 meters (17.7 feet).

17.7 feet is no where close to 90 feet.

Why does this all matter?

The post What is the true size of Colossal Squid? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Why should I give a flying flip about how big they get?

Let’s just say it’s about more than bragging rights. Precise, accurate, and quantified measurements matter at both a philosophical and pragmatic level.  Saying something is approximately “this big” while holding your arms out to indicate your full arm span just won’t cut it.  This is science not a fishing story recounted over brews with the buds.  And just like knowing whether you’re meeting your buds at 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. determines how you pace those brews, knowing the size limits of an organism makes a huge difference as well.

Given their size, both the whale shark and giant squid are surprisingly elusive.  These behemoths lead predominantly solitary lives in the open, and often deep, oceans far from human sight.  Finding a specimen to measure is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.  So, why pursue it, right? Because this seemingly impossible task offers a huge payoff, duh.

From accurate measurements of size we can infer much about an organism. In some aspects this is basic physics.  The mass of an object dictates friction, acceleration, force, and so on. The metabolism of an organism, telling us how much oxygen and carbon an animal consumes, is a function of size as well.  Indeed, we have precise mathematical equations, based on studies of closely related species, that can tell what the metabolism of such giants would be.  Knowing whether a whale shark is 10 tons, 15 tons, or 20 tons lets us know whether a whale shark uses 868, or 1176, or 1,460 light bulbs worth of energy every day.  It doesn’t stop with metabolism either.  In spite of errors and exceptions, heart rate, speed, growth, lifespan, population size, lifetime reproductive output, and many more things can all be estimated from body size.  This provides a substantial advantage when trying to understand organisms we know virtually nothing about.

Changes in size over time can also tell us when a species, including our whale shark and squid, is in trouble. Researchers working on Nigaloo Reef off Australia found that the average length of whale sharks decreased by nearly two meters in the last decade. The most likely culprit is overfishing pressure the whale sharks encounter during other parts of their migration.

So, How big do Whale Sharks get?

Beer Google version:  If you search around the internet you will find varying answers.  This Whale Shark FAQ places the upper estimate of length at 21.4 meters (70.21 feet).  A YouTube video claims that a filmed individual is 18.29 meters (60 feet).  The conservation organization Oceana suggests the upper size is 20 meters (65.6 feet).  Compare that to what you find in the scientific literature. Martin in 2007, “1 of only 10 sharks that routinely attain lengths of more than four metres [13.12 feet],” and Coleman ten years prior,  “Most specimens reported in the literature are between 4 and 10 m [32.8 feet].” 

The Sober Truth:  According Coleman in 1997 the largest scientifically, i.e. accurately, measured whale shark was 12 meters (39.37 feet).  Newer work on the Nigaloo Reef whale sharks also reports the maximum size at 12 meters.  During my work with Al Dove on the estimating sizes of whale sharks at the Afeura (with lasers!), we found the maximum length to be 10 meters (32.8 feet).  And although we’ve only measured just a few individuals so far, the length is far cry from the 20 meters so often reported.  UPDATE: Simon Pierce commented below that it may be that one of the reasons we tend to measure smaller sharks in aggregations in coastal zones is that they are predominantly juveniles. He also notes that a “20 meter specimen was reported in the scientific literature from the Taiwan fishery in the 1990s and an 18.8 m specimen was reported from the Indian fishery (summarised by Rowat & Brooks 2012, JFB).”

What about the other big ‘un, the giant squid. How big do they get?

Beer Google Version:  Getting a handle on how large another colossus of the ocean, the giant squid, can grow is equally vexing.  In this video the reporter claims Giant Squids can reach 50 feet (15.24 meters).  Marinebio.org claims that Giant Squids can reach 18 meters (~60 feet).  Indeed the idea of a 60 foot Giant Squid appears to be part of the lore of the media (CBS, National Geographic, Discovery, Santa Cruz Sentinel to name just a few of many).

The Sober Truth:  Does the 60-foot giant squid actually exist?  No.  As Steve O’Shea, giant squid expert, published at TOMNO,

“the largest specimen known washed ashore on a New Zealand beach, Lyall Bay (Wellington) in the winter of 1887. It was a female and “in all ways smaller than any of the hitherto-described New Zealand species”, according to Kirk (1887), the gentleman who described this very specimen. Apparently it measured 55 feet 2 inches in total length (16.8m), but this simply cannot be correct, and this length almost certainly is a product of imagination or lengthening (stretching like rubber bands) of the very slight tentacular arms, as it mantle was only 71 inches long (1.8m). We know that it was not measured with a conventional tape, but was paced, as Kirk says so in his publication. A comparable-sized female (ML 1.8m) measured post mortem and relaxed (by modern standards) today would have a total length of ~32 feet (9.8m)…Of more than 130 Architeuthis specimens that the authors have examined, none has attained total length [exceeding] of 13m (42 feet). “

For my own work, I have compiled every known scientific measurement of a giant squid (these don’t include Steve’s unpublished data).  Below is a plot of how many individuals of different sizes are known to date.  The three largest washed ashore in Spain in 2003 are 36.4, 39.1, and 39.4 feet long (11.1, 11.97, and 11.99 meters).  However, as Steve mentions most giant squids rarely reach this size. Most are between 10 and 30 feet almost half of the super giant squid purported at 60 feet.

Why do we make a “big fish” out of everything?

Frankly, humans are crap at eyeballing size. We suffer from what is called size constancy.  Psychologist Irene Sperandio explains it like this:

Humans also have the tendency to tell distorted stories either for simplicity or just plain good entertainment value. In one study, participants labeled 61% of their retellings as distorted (containing exaggerations, omissions, minimizations, or additions) and 42% of their retellings as completely inaccurate (pdf is here and gives a great overview of this area of research).  The accuracy and recall of details gets even worse if we are telling a story for entertainment as opposed to accuracy. Of course, accuracy can be altered by who the audience is and how attentive they are and by the accounts of other eyewitnesses.

Humans also seem to focus on extremes.  Stephen Jay Gould acknowledged this tendency when he slammed the idea of Cope’s Rule (that size of animals increases through the fossil record and through time).

“Our strong and biased predilection for focusing on extremes (and misconstruing their trends as surrogates for a totality), rather than documenting full ranges of variation, generates all manner of deep and stubborn errors…We should remember Little Buttercup’s admonition to Captain Corcoran in H.M.S Pinafore, that ‘things are seldom what they seem,’ while we must shun the allure of bigness, for ‘bulls are but inflated frogs’.”

In short (pun intended), size does matter.  And, whale sharks and giant squids are large enough without humans helping them along.

The post Whale Sharks and Giant Squids: Big or Bu!!$hit? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Want to know how to capture a Giant Squid on video?

Some people use worms to attract fish. Others use intricately painted lures or feathery flies.To get the catch of a lifetime, marine biologist Edith Widder built a bioluminescent sphere that mimics the frenzied pinwheel display of a panicked jellyfish.Her soccer-ball-sized creation enticed a giant squid to swim near waiting undersea cameras…While other scientists used noisy submersible vehicles in their attempts to film the giant squid, Widder deployed Medusa — a system she co-invented that combines a highly sensitive camera and a “far red” light source with an especially long wavelength that is invisible to most sea creatures, which can see only greens and blues.

via Giant squid video resulted from biologists invented lure – latimes.com.

The post How to get video of the largest invertebrate first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Finally found, albiet brief, video of the giant squid. Spectacular! Although it is unlikely, despite what the reporter states, that Giant Squids obtain sizes of 50 feet. As I mention in this post that covers everything you wanted to know about the Giant Squid, the longest scientifically recorded length of a Giant Squid is 42 feet.

UPDATE: Go watch this video! Skip ahead to 1:00 to see a much longer set of video of the encounter. Not sure how long this will be up.

The post First Video Glimpse of the Giant Squid first appeared on Deep Sea News.