FAQ
A contribution of The Cephalopod Page
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Dr. Wood, I am an avid scuba diver here in San Diego, CA. During the winters of 1995 - 1999 I did several dives off La Jolla Shores (easy access to a deep canyon) and saw what I think of as the "squid run" during the January - February months. This last winter the water was a bit warm and I heard folks talk about why the warm water kept the squid run from us folks here. I heard that the squid run did happen in Northern CA, but just not here. Well, it's September now and THE SQUID ARE MATING off La Jolla Shores, I dove just this past Tuesday night (9/12/00) and saw quite the spectacle. It's not as thick as I remember in years past, but here they are. This whole calendar moving thing the squid did has got me interested in doing some reading on this topic. What can you tell me about the squid I am seeing? Why do they mate when they do? I have also heard that the squid from up North (Monterey?) are larger? Also, if you can recommend any readings that would further my understanding of the squid, that would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou, Deborah |
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| Good timing! I just updated my page on the very beast in question. Please take a look at the Loligo opalescenspage on The Cephalopod Page. My little paragraph there should answer some of your questions. At the bottom of the page there are three links which you should check out. Your best bet for finding the life history information you are after is the last link to Lou Ziedberg's page - I found out quite a bit by poking around his site. Also, invertebrates in colder water tend to grow much slower but reach a larger size at maturity - this could be why the Northern squid are larger. Actually, the entire life-cycle of squid is VERY dependent on temperature! John Forsythe has done some research on the effect of temperature on hatching squid. His model predicts that a change of just 1 degree warmer per month will cause hatchling squids that are three months old to be the same as those six months old! Now that you know what species you have, you can go to CephBase Species Search and type in "Loligo" in the genus field and "opal" in the species field and see the full taxonomy. Dr. James Wood |