Ecology & Zoology

Yesterday I mentioned the idea that fishermen killing sharks might have allowed squid to proliferate and eat up some of the smaller fish that fishermen like to catch. What goes around comes around! So when I saw this piece suggesting that squid fishing in New Zealand had caused sea lion decline, I first guessed that it was because the sea lions were starving for want of squid. That's part of it, but it also seems that the fishery may be directly killing sea lions: The study reviewed all previous data and concluded the most plausible explanation for the decline in breeding females in the…

It's Shark Week! Not that I begrudge the elasmobranchs their ten thousand minutes of fame, but come on, Discovery Channel, you do Shark Week every year. When are you going to switch it up and do Squid Week? Anyway, sharks eat squid (along with everything else*) so there is an interesting cephalopod tie-in, reported by Philip Friedman: Patrick Douglass from the Shark Diver is convinced that the reason anglers now see more Humboldt squid in the local waters is the lack of sharks. . . . Many anglers believe that the recent sand bass and barracuda drought was a direct result of large numbers [of…

As a teaching assistant for the pilot section of Bio 44Y, I spend Wednesday afternoons accompanying 10 students of field ecology to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Only five miles from the main quad, we’ve battled rattlesnakes and squeezed past poison oak — but the nearest I’ve come to disaster was almost letting a wasp fly into our class van. When we’re worried about being stung (knock on wood, I’ve so far evaded the experience), we tend to see bees and wasps as the flying enemy, rather than as pollinators, critical to the reproductive life of most of the world’s flowering plants. Of…

Squids, as I may have mentioned before, are the snacks of the sea. Everyone who can eat them, does. Whales. Sharks. Birds. Other squids. They're swimming tubes of protein with no scales or bones to get in the way, and they're highly abundant. If you're any kind of marine predator, squids are the perfect prey. But one has to wonder: if squids fuel everything from albacore to albatross, what fuels the squids? Sure, they'll eat each other, but the ouroboros model doesn't really work that well for ecology. Squid cannot live by squid alone. Every species of squid, of course, has its own solution…

I thought I'd write a compelling story about Humboldt squid and one of their favorite prey items, the lightfish Vinciguerria. These two creatures are quite the dynamic duo: one flashing like a red-and-white strobe, the other studded with glowing photophores. They clearly belong at some kind of deep-sea rave. But I'm riding a train, and I keep getting distracted by the scenery. I can't help it; I love the California hills! By the fifth false start, I realized that if I wanted to post anything today, it would have to be light and fluffy. So here is a picture I took of a juvenile Humboldt squid…

I have always liked dolphins but I can't pinpoint why - maybe it was "Flipper" when I was a kid, it can't be "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" because a whale was saving the Earth in that one.    It could certainly be Manfred Mann's Earth Band.  If you aren't familiar with Manfred Mann, he was a keyboard player from South Africa who made it big in England in the 1960s and then quit to simultaneously be more cynical than the pop hit factory his band had become and more pure at the same time; by doing jingles to pay the bills while he made the music he wanted on the side. He was a…

No, I'm not suggesting that when a recession hits, you should go out and invest in squid fisheries. (But I'm not not saying that. I'm--oh, forget it.) Rather, in the words of my PhD advisor William Gilly: Making good from bad is something that we need to learn more about, and perhaps economics theorists can learn from the strategies of the Humboldt squid. In his latest blog post at Scientific American, Gilly tells a very curious story about how Humboldt squid in the Gulf of California responded to an "ecological recession," and how they're recovering.  Although squid don't have the…

The famous Northwest Passage has become infamous in recent years, as Arctic sea ice coverage shrinks and leaves an open waterway between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. We tend to think of this in terms of what it means for human transport and drilling, but we're hardly the only fish in the sea. Are there any other species taking advantage of the chance to explore? A Reuters article by Michael Ricciardi says Yes: From microscopic plants and jellyfish to predatory packs of Orcas and soon-to-be-arriving squid...The "alien" invasion of the Atlantic ocean by Pacific Ocean…

A couple of curious squid stories have been peppering my news feed this weekend:First, a dried squid in Hawaii looked enough like a severed hand to get the homicide brigade called out to the beach. Um, creepy! And not particularly squid-like. I think I agree with the commenter who suggested it might actually be a dried octopus. Second is a squid who's been dead for MUCH longer--like maybe a hundred million years. New digging in the Manitoba Escarpment has unearthed an ancient squid pen, the stiff rod that runs along the length of a squid's body and gives its muscles something to push against…

I really want a bumper sticker that says that, with this picture: Obviously the news CotS is up! Go check it out at the Artful Amoeba--it is seriously awesome. HONK.