Did you guy see this on Yahoo - Giant Squid

[Elite]

http://www.yahoo.com/s/466132

All I caught is King fish . I want one of those Squid

 

[hawaiianwargod]

Damn....you could hula hoop your calamare before eating them!!!
Sweet!

 

[Thales]

The ceph message boards have been hopping all morning!

 

[Unarce]

The key was when Kubodera brought on a whale expert to help track the diving patterns of sperm whales.

 

[otterpop510]

24 feet! wow, thats crazy.. too bad they killed it in the process of taping/capturing though..

 

[Thales]

24 feet doesn't seem to be right. More likely 3-4 meters total length and 1-1.5 meters mantle length.

 

[Unarce]

Maybe they're counting the two longer feeding tentacles.

 

[Thales]

Even with the tentacles. You get two lengths with the GS - mantle length and total length. Reuters has it at 3.5 meters with makes much more sense given this pic with Ku.

News agencies almost always go big with squid reports - it really makes the researchers nutty.

An interesting bit of an article from Steve OShea of much tv and research fame:

Architeuthis is frequently reported to attain a lotal length of 60 feet. 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" (Kirk 1887); it measured 55 feet 2 inches in total length, exaggerated by great lengthening (stretching like rubber bands) of the very slight tentacular arms; its mantle length was 71 inches (1.8 m). A comparable-sized female (ML 1.8 m) measured post mortem and relaxed (by modern standards) would have a total length of ~ 32 feet.

Mantle length (as opposed to total length) is the standard measure in cephalopods. Architeuthis is not known to attain a mantle length in excess of 2.25 m. Standard Length (SL) is the length of a squid excluding the tentacles; in Architeuthis this measure very rarely exceeds 5 m. The rest of the animal's length, to a total length of 13 m, is made up of the two long tentacles. Of 105 specimens that we have examined, none has exceeded these figures (Fig. 7).

 

[stubbsz]

Why did they capture and pickle it? Can't they get enough scientific info from the ones that get killed accidentally?

I watched another show yesterday while trying to find a copy of that video that would work. There was this scientist in the waters around New Zealand explaining how the sea was basically devoid of fish because of the way they have systematically scraped the bottom of the ocean free of life with nets. Totally depressing show.

Just thought I'd share that in the holiday season.

-Adrian

 

[Thales]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8814380#post8814380 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by stubbsz
Why did they capture and pickle it? Can't they get enough scientific info from the ones that get killed accidentally?

Nope!
The big questions everyone seems to have now are regarding behavior - how does it actually hunt, how many are there, do they school, what do they eat, are they strong or weak, etc.

I watched another show yesterday while trying to find a copy of that video that would work. There was this scientist in the waters around New Zealand explaining how the sea was basically devoid of fish because of the way they have systematically scraped the bottom of the ocean free of life with nets. Totally depressing show.

Just thought I'd share that in the holiday season.

-Adrian

Thats Steve OShea, and don't be depressed. In Feb, NZ banned bottom trawling.

 

[Ti]

anyone have garlic and butter?

 

[stubbsz]

Thats Steve OShea, and don't be depressed. In Feb, NZ banned bottom trawling.

Sweet. Some good news...I wonder how many decades it will take to recover. Although the best news is that they hopefully won't take the practice into international waters which seemed to be the worry.