Local Fishermen Training Giant Squid to Retrieve Lost Gear
By Mark Anderson, April 1, 2024
***Special April 1 report***
The deep sea presents so many mind-bending creatures—and plenty of surprises—that maybe this shouldn’t be a shock.
Still, it’s surprising to learn that one of the most famous and fearsome deep sea residents, the giant squid, is now working with Monterey Bay fishermen to clean up derelict gear.
Giant squid do offer a helpful set of tools and talents, including the largest eyes of any animal on the entire planet. Up to 10 inches in diameter, they allow the huge gear custodians to spot lost traps, itinerant pots and sunken floats at a distance.
They can also reach depths of 6,000 feet below. To do so the huge cephalopods, which reach 40 feet in length and a half ton in weight, deploy jet propulsion by shooting water from their mantle cavity through a siphon.
If all that wasn’t impressive enough, they can change the color and pattern of their skin, squirt dark clouds of ink, and produce bioluminescent light through specialized cells called photophores.
Giant squid also enjoy the dexterity—and accompanying clean-up abilities—that come with eight arms decorated with suction cups from stem to tip. Like many cephalopods, they can also regenerate lost limbs (and parts of their mantle, and even their eyes).
Two additional tentacles with club-like ends have sharp toothlike hooks that also help hold onto prey, or in this case, slippery gear.
No giant squid made themselves available for comment, which is on brand, as they’re so famously elusive that famed biologist-broadcaster David Attenborough once said, “I mean, we know they exist because we have seen dead ones. But I have never seen a living one. Nor has anybody else.”
One of the fishermen teaming up with the giant squid spoke with The Trust on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns over complicating union negotiations with the sea creatures that have grown increasingly testy.
“They are incredible, incredible partners, very talented, and skilled, and cunning,” the Santa Cruz-based fisher said. “But they can be a little aggressive.”
(Editor’s note: A previous April 1 special report also involved large creatures of the deep, namely the 2022 news that giant isopods and spooky-looking lumpfish were attacking humans on Monterey Bay beaches.)