Indie Squid Kid

The U.S. Department of the Interior reported today that a 19.5 foot long Giant Squid was unexpectedly netted off the coast of Louisiana. The 103 pound squid was caught July 30 in a trawl net at a depth of more than 1,500 feet as it was pulled by a research vessel. It was the first Architeuthis specimen to be found in the Gulf of Mexico since 1954, and the first ever to be recovered by a scientific expedition. The scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service were participating in a pilot study of the diets of Sperm Whales.  The rare squid, which did not survive the rapid change in water depth when brought to the surface, was sent to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History for further study.

Via Reuters and NOAA

photo credit: NOAA

OK, so this doesn’t have anything to do with Cthulhu Week, but I thought this story was cool enough to break protocol.

Paleontologists in the UK have discovered a fossilized cephalopod so well preserved that the creature’s ink sac was still intact. In fact, scientists were able to extract a portion of the ink and use it to draw a picture of what the creature looked like when alive!

The 150 million year old fossil of Belemnotheutis antiquus was found in a recently rediscovered dig site in north Wiltshire that was first excavated during Victorian times. The excavation was lead by Dr. Phil Wilby, and was sponsored by the British Geological Survey and the Curry Fund.

B. antiquus was a belemnite, an extinct form of cephalopod closely related to modern squid and cuttlefish. Belemnites were abundant during the later part of the Mesozoic Era, but they went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period. They resembled living squids, although they had ten hook-lined arms of equal length (no feeding tentacles) and an internal shell which protected the rear portions of the animial. This “guard” is usually the only part of a belemnite to become fossilized.

Via Daily Mail Online

As Dr. M at Deep-Sea News deftly points out…

The Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux) and the Humboldt Squid (Dosidicus gigas) are two very different animals. So, no matter what many in the media are reporting, thousands of Giant Squids did not wash ashore after an earthquake, and Giant Squid are not invading the waters off Southern California.

Squid Fail indeed.

This very dramatic video further documents the recent invasion of Humboldt Squid into the waters of Southern California…

From NBC Bay Area via Pharyngula

The Humboldt Squid (Dosidicus giga) is a large predatory squid found all along the Pacific coast of North America. Also known as the Jumbo Squid, the Jumbo Flying Squid, and the Red Devil, Humboldts can grow up to 7 ft long and weigh as much as 100 lbs. They generally inhabit deep water, but come to the surface at night to feed. They can be very aggressive, and have reportedly attacked divers and fishermen.

Could a realatively minor earthquake (magnitude 4.0) really cause a school of squid to beach themselves? The experts seem to think it is just a coincidence, and point out that these type of strandings, while rare, have happened before.

Hot on the heels of Movie Week, I find out that Disney is working on a prequel to their classic 1954 adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (covered previously here and here). Due to be released in 2011, and titled Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, McG (Terminator: Salvation, Charlie’s Angels) is attached to direct. And I am afraid.

Supposedly, the prequel will tell the story of how Captain Nemo goes from being an Indian prince to the brooding science pirate we all know and love. Or, in McG’s words “Where you look at the original picture [Nemo] just enters and he’s already pissed off and underwater and what we want to do is show how he got there.” McG has also stated that he wants Will Smith to play Captain Nemo.

Wait…Seriously?!

Don’t get me wrong, I like Will Smith just fine, but why go through all the trouble of adhering to the character’s original backstory (in The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne reveals that Nemo was Prince Dakkar, son of the Raja of Bundelkhand) but not cast an Indian actor? I’m having troubling visions of a mutant mashup of the abysmal League of Extraordinary Gentleman movie and Wild Wild West.

The Hollywood Reporter reported (duh!) yesterday that the script for Captain Nemo is undergoing a major rewrite, but only time will tell if this is a good thing or not. (For the record, I’m getting all this second-hand from Meredith Woerner over at io9, THE blog for science fiction news.) I guess the odds are pretty good that there will be some kind of cephalopodian element to this movie, and, if so, I fear the odds are even better that it will end up in the Indie Squid Kid Movie Hall of Shame.

So, to cheer myself up, I’ll end with some production images from Disney’s original 20,000 Leagues movie. All of these and more can be found at Pat Regan’s wonderful www.volcaniasubmarine.com.

James Mason as Captain Nemo

Production sketch of the squid fight.

Nemo vs the giant squid!

Still from the discarded "sunset" squid fight sequence.

The photos below show two of the many amazing entries to the annual Sand Sculpture Festival at Weston-super-Mare’s Beach Lawns which runs from July 4 – September 6. This year’s theme, as you might have surmised, is the sea.

From on BBC Somerset via Deep-Sea News

A study by a Tiwanese scientist that has found that squids and octopi can hear, a question that has been debated for nearly a century. Sensory phyiologist Hong Young Yan of the Taiwan National Academy of Science in Taipei found through his experiments with the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) and the Bigfin reef squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) that cephalopods use an organ called the statocyst is used to register sound.

A school of Bigfin reef squid.

BBC Earth News reports;

Yan’s team had to overcome particular technical challenges to investigate the cephalopods’ hearing ability. The usual way to prove that an organism can hear is to measure how its nervous system electrically responds to sound. But that can involve directly attaching electrodes to exposed nerves, an invasive procedure that could harm delicate cephalopods.

So Yan invented a non-invasive method, which involves placing electrodes on an animal’s body to measure the electrical activity in its brain. In this way, he could measure within just a couple of hours whether the brain of an octopus or squid responds to sound.

So, between a squid and an octopus, which has the best hearing? The scientists found that squid can register a wider range of sound, but that both species hear best at a frequency of 600Hz.

Read the full BBC article.

Finally, proof that super-intelligent cephalopods created the universe…

Found on Synthstuff

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel via BoingBoing

Remains of a rare giant squid turned up off the coast of Santa Cruz, California yesterday. According to researchers from the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation, this specimen was probably 25 feet long and weighed hundreds of pounds when alive. Only one giant squid has ever been caught on video alive.

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

A flock of gulls feeding on the carcass alerted the crew to the remains. Their first thought, said crew members, was that the animal was a seal but after motoring closer to it they recognized the chewed-up squid…

(Giant squid expert and Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History curator Eric) Hochberg said there’s likely several squid along the California coast, but because the animal swims at depths of thousands of feet, it’s almost never seen and difficult to study…

“The animal is just so big and so rare … it’s very easy for people to get a little nervous about what it is, and the stories go from there,” Hochberg said.