Posted on 07/25/2002 3:01:06 PM PDT by Shermy
Super, spurting squid
Jumbo mollusks swarm O.C. waters, soak fishermen.
July 25, 2002
By GARY ROBBINS
The Orange County Register
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CHRIS BATTS, 13, of Long Beach holds up a jumbo squid Wednesday at the Balboa Pavilion. He and others caught some 37,000 squid in less than a week. |
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Kane Curran got hit in the kisser Wednesday by a creature whose name sounds like a finger food.
That's right, the ever tasty, always feisty and rarely seen jumbo squid have invaded Orange County coastal waters.
A 20-inch-long squid squirted Curran in the face with inky seawater as the 14-year-old Costa Mesa youth reeled the mollusk aboard the sport-fishing boat Freelance off Newport Harbor.
"It was really kind of fun," said Curran, one of hundreds of fishermen who has jammed on to charter boats since Saturday to participate in a floating free-for-all.
Jumbo squid ingest water into a body cavity, then shoot it out to propel themselves or fend off predators. Namely, fisherman bent on landing some calamari. Many anglers wear raincoats or trash bags in a usually fruitless attempt to stay dry.
"It's been a battle zone on deck, there's so much squirting going on," said Chris Gobel, skipper of Freelance.
Thien Nguyen of Fountain Valley was among the fisherman wrangling squid Wednesday.
"Reeling a squid in is like pulling a 5-gallon bucket of water out of the ocean," Nguyen said.
The strain is apparently worth the gain. At least 37,000 jumbo squid have been caught in the past six days.
It's been four years since jumbo squid have been caught in large numbers locally. An El Niño was developing at the time. Some people attributed the invasion to the warm water caused by El Niño, which might have been wrong.
"There's no El Niño now. Southern California waters have been colder than usual," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "That's led to greater productivity in the ocean - more plankton, more squid. It's like the ecosystem is on steroids."
I'm sending this paragraph to a friend who still has one foot in the enviral door. He swears that due to global warming, we are in phase 1 of an el nino!
There's no El Niño now. Southern California waters have been colder than usual," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "That's led to greater productivity in the ocean - more plankton, more squid. It's like the ecosystem is on steroids."
To heck with the fins,
who are the hunks??? :)
The jumbo flying squid, known by their scientific name Dosidicus gigas...Giga-ping!
Must be sushi ;-)
Looks like an oarfish. They're the source of a lot of sea serpent sightings.
They're known to swim with their heads out of the water on occasion, and big ones can get to 50 feet or more. It's the world's longest osteobranch, or true, bony fish.
More on oarfish...
The scientific name is Regalecus glesne. The first oarfish found was in 1771 when a Danish man found one lying along the shore. Some people think that the tales of sea serpents were really oarfish.
The oarfish swims with its dorsal fin, not its entire body. We know this because one diver has actually seen the oarfish alive! Most oarfish are seen dead because they live so deep in the ocean and they only come to the surface when they are sick or injured or when there is seismic activity on the ocean floor. Like volcanoes. The oarfish floats to the top and the pressure is so strong that the oarfish cannot swim back down, so it dies.
The oarfish is found worldwide, in both tropical and warm climates. It lives between 700 and 3000 feet deep in the ocean. It can survive with only half of its body left! It eats shrimp off the ocean floor and scientists say it is harmless.
In 1996 Navy Seals found a 25-foot oarfish in California and a Colorado man, snorkeling in Baja, Mexico, ran in to an 18-foot oarfish!
Photos of Oarfish Coming Ashore in the Sea of Cortez
Underwater pic of Oarfish propulsion by means of an undulating dorsal fin
I have one of the large prints and scanned it in two jpg's side by side.
There are several tip offs to the BS in the caption.
Those "Army" soldiers weren't in Laos in 1973.
If we did have troops at the Mekong River,
they would have put a base on the Thai side not the enemy side.
Brown t-shirts weren't issued yet in 1973.
Things to look for in the photo.
That is a secure military base.
There is a guy in the background wearing a white Navy type cap.
The obvious physical condition of those young guys indicates Spec Ops of some sort.
Duh, US Navy seals.
Futher investigation turned up the original source, which was a photo in an official US Navy publication.
See this link, and follow the link to the real story.
Never mind the Thai link, it doesn't work anymore,
I'll have to fix that.
Unless you want to talk about Singha. ;-)
I'm under the strict orders of Mrs ASA Vet to not tell
our Thai & Lao friends that the photo they display
in their homes of the "Naga Queen" is a fake.
The replies/comments related to this photo are funny and might be of some interest to the three of you.
No Comment to you ASA Vet!
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