Well! The last day of the squid fertilization workshop was just as exciting, in its own way, as Sunday's fishing excusion.
The workshop's dozen participants hail from Mexico, Peru, Brazil, USA, Germany, Russia, and Spain. But our passion for cephalopod reproduction is as pure as our backgrounds are diverse. That's right, we are all obsessed with squid sex. So obsessed that we will make ourselves late for lunch with concerns about the chemistry of egg masses, and debate ommastrephid paralarval nutrition well into the night.
Yesterday morning we showed each other videos of egg masses and baby squid. We cooed over Susana's paralarvae and applauded Sakurai's shockingly spherical egg masses.
Here, for a taste of the experience, is a video of the Humboldt squid egg mass we found in the Gulf of California in 2006. (Below is a still image to whet the appetite, if you weren't immediately motivated to click on the link.)
The video was taken by Lloyd Trueblood and published as supplemental material in Staaf et al. (2008). Natural egg mass deposition by the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) in the Gulf of California and characteristics of hatchlings and paralarvae. Journal of the Marine Biological Associated of the United Kingdom 88(4):759-770.
