Fishermen spotted the carcass of the 8-foot-long, pound baby giant squid in Monterey Bay three years ago, according to Gilly. Like their giant counterparts, Humboldt squid are enigmatic. No one has seen them mate or lay eggs.
No one has watched them develop from egg to adult. No one knows how many exist. These tentacled titans have now ensnared marine biologists with another riddle: They have left their normal gathering grounds in the Sea of Cortez in Baja California, Mexico.
Fishermen worry that a critical part of their livelihood may be gone. Others have physically shrunk—just one bizarre adaptation among their many strange body-shifting behaviors. She and her crewmates pulled up to 15 squid out of the water every night, when they would come up to the surface from depths of more than 3, feet to feed.
Many of the pound cephalopods she caught were about 4 feet long. Most were a year old. Scientists can tell their age by looking at the number of rings on tiny crystals located near their brain called statoliths, like botanists can age a tree by counting its rings. These stones help a squid detect gravity and maintain their balance and sense of space.
They housed squid in separate tubes to keep them from attacking one another. For instance, altering the temperature and oxygen content of the water could trigger or change their escape response — the way squid dart away when startled by a predator. Baby Humboldt squid. Danna Staaf Staaf dissected other squid to study their development, the focus of her dissertation. She used their eggs and sperm to make squid babies. She wanted to discover the temperature range at which their eggs could hatch and develop.
