Heralded as both a ruthless sea monster and a potential economic salvation to Fort Bragg”s fishing industry, the Humboldt, or jumbo, squid has now become a memory and a mystery.
The scientist who has spent his career studying the Humboldt squid thinks the creatures may have shrunk — no longer growing into the 4-foot-long giants up to 100 pounds that some once thought could change everything off Mendocino.
“I had just gotten a full set of tackle so we could go out and catch the squid and now there aren”t any,” said Randy Thornton, who captains the Telestar party boat out of Noyo Harbor.
Catches of jumbo squid in 2009-2010 seemed limitless, the creatures fought like sea monsters, putting every game fish to shame in the “fight” department. Thornton recalls that few anglers could bear to battle more than one into the boat and some would give up.
Until 2009, the jumbo squid rarely ventured farther north than Monterey. Suddenly, like armies of fearsome, gigantic barbarians, they moved north en masse, churning the waters off San Francisco, then Mendocino, Oregon, all the way to Alaska.
In 2009 and into 2010, the horde gobbled everything they could sink their beaks into. Thornton said when the jumbos first arrived that he was concerned that any of Fort Bragg”s fish species could survive for long.
Some doom-sayers predicted destruction from fish unable to resist the gigantic predators.
Others pointed to global warming creating permanent ocean changes. Fishermen saw possible bounty that would benefit the environment and invigorate commercial and party-boat fishing fleets.
But the giants were caught for less than a year, then vanished.
“I spent $3,000 on tackle and I think I made $2,900 on squid fishing,” Thornton said.
Humboldt squid (named for the explorer not the county) turn out to be even more dramatically enigmatic than they are fearsome predators.
These jumbos (much smaller than deep-sea true “giant” squid) had ventured north year round and in similar huge numbers once before, in the 1940s, another unresolved mystery.
The disappearances and changes in migration are apparently tied to weather patterns and the creatures unique reactions to different water conditions.
Sometimes, the Humboldt squid is one of the fastest-growing forms of life on earth, going from the microscopic to a 5-foot-long 100-pound creature in its short two-year lifespan.
Stanford professor William F. Gilly, the leading expert on the Humboldt squid, is finding that weather events may both scatter and “shrink” the jumbos.
Gilly said the bountiful catch of 2009-2010 has been tied to a 2009 El Nino event. Gilly says the Humboldt squid seems to react by not growing so large in response to El Nino”s water temperature and upwelling changes. The squid may still be out there off the Mendocino Coast, only smaller and maybe farther out to sea, Gilly said.
“If what we are seeing in the Gulf of California can be extrapolated to this offshore area, the Humboldt squid that are there now are probably very small and reproducing at a much smaller than normal size. The remote location and small size would both tend to make them less noticeable.”
Gilly explained that scientists are still learning about the bizarre reaction the Humboldt squid has to the water temperature changes.
“When El Nino comes, new-born Humboldt squid seem to make one of two choices, and possibly both. First, to migrate to a place not so affected by El Nino — somewhere away from the wind-driven upwelling centers that normally support large populations of squid. Second, to forget about growing to be a giant with 30 million eggs, which can only happen in a highly productive area with lots of food, and reproduce as early as possible with only a few million eggs — cut your losses and pass things on the next generation,” Gilly said.
El Nino is a climate event that occurs about every five years and creates upheaval in both the living world of the ocean and in the weather. El Nino features warming in the temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean and air pressure changes in the tropical latitudes.
Gilly thinks he knows where the squid may have gone and is looking for a ride to find out.
“One other recent discovery that we”ve made is that a potential spawning ground opens up a few hundred miles offshore central California through Washington from July through October each year. That could be where the squid went to during the last year. Know anybody with a good boat that wants to go to 130 W, 44N during August? That”s exactly where I”d like to look,” said Gilly.
Thornton, who went out and caught jumbo squid in 2009 that resulted in a squid feast at Town Hall as part of a Gilly presentation to locals, said he would be willing to give the scientist a ride, even to look for mini-jumbos.”
“I”d be game,” Thornton said.
Humboldt squid are a key foodstuff in much of the world, especially South America. The smaller size is bad news in areas where they are relied on as food.
“What was more interesting was that in the south, where large squid should have been, we found only tiny Humboldt squid, not much bigger than California market squid, that were fully mature and reproducing. These squid were four to five months old, so they would have been born during the height of the El Nino. Full maturity at this size has not been observed in the Gulf of California since 1999, a La Nina year after the 1997-98 El Nino,” Gilly said.
Another recent mystery about jumbo squid has been how easily they can be injured by noise pollution, possibly from seismic surveying now thought to be non-harmful.
The deaths of thousands of Humboldt squid, which died off the coast of Oregon in 2004 and 2008 weren”t caused by a shift in deep-sea currents as previously thought, underwater noise pollution literally blew holes in their heads, a Spanish scientist has found.
Michel Andr? of the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, led a team of biologists who found that subjecting squid to even short intervals of relatively low intensity, low frequency sound caused large holes to form in the squid”s statocysts; the fluid-filled structures that enable the invertebrates to maintain their balance and position in water.
Email Frank Hartzell at frankhartzell@gmail.com.
