Entry #880

A local trawler called and said they caught a huge squid and are keeping it in their onboard freezer if I was interested. I was.

So we thawed it out and then dissected it yesterday with our high school intern and a photographer from the Providence Journal present.  We haven't figured out the exact species yet, but it is related to the Pacific Humboldt Squid.  It was caught off the New England coast in a trawl taken at about 1300 feet in depth.  I missed the first part of the dissection because I was dealing with a school group but I'll link to the whole photo essay once my staff gets all the pics to me.  Below are some shots I managed to take myself.

The squid weighed in at 36 pounds and was six feet one inch including tentacles.  Here's a shot well into the dissection.  Note the common Loligo squid next to it.  This little one would be classified as "large" if purchased in a seafood shop.

When we first opened it up we discovered right away that it was a female.  The body cavity at the tail end was packed with eggs.  (The big sac on the right is the stomach, which we'll get to in a moment.)  The "pen" of a squid is a thin plastic-like structure that runs along the dorsal side of the body.  It is a remnant of the molluscan shell and helps to keep the soft body rigid.  In the small squid the pen would be about five inches long.  Rebecca is holding the pen we pulled out of this baby during the early part of the dissection:

The eight main tentacles were a bit over a foot long each, but the two feeding arms were at least double this length.  All the arms were, of course, covered with suction cups, and these were largest on the ends of the feeding arms.

Looking closely at the suction cups revealed dozens of razor-sharp teeth studding the entire diameter of the cups.  These were very sharp and caused us to go through a lot of rubber gloves.

The eyes of this thing impressed me the most.  Unfortunately they were deflated due to either water pressure changes as it was pulled up or the weight of all the other "regular" squid in the net.  The lenses were the size of large marbles and we lost one of them during the procedure (I blame the cat).

Like all cephalopods, squid have a powerful beak which looks like that of a parrot's (only upside down).  This one could easily take off a finger.

After we removed the gills, eggs, ink sac (still intact and full of ink), the huge liver and the rest of the organs, we decided to play with the stomach.  We saved this for last guessing that once we opened it up the smell was going to be nasty. By the way, the organs were in perfect condition as the fishermen flash-froze it literally minutes after it was brought on board. Here's me (freshly shaven), holding up the unopened stomach:

The squid was frozen grasping a large mackerel with it's head missing, so we assumed it was feeding on fish.  The mackerel must have been mixed in with the catch and grabbed at random in the net because there was no fish in the stomach.  All of the stomach contents were chopped up pieces of Ilex squid, a smaller species that grows to about a foot in length.  That beak really does its job at slicing and dicing and we guessed the stomach contained at least two or three dozen squid.  Aren't the little squid eyes mixed in cute?

I should note that the above picture has an approval rating slightly higher than 29%.

Comments

[Wayne]

I give the whole thing an approval rating into the 90s. Fantastic story, Mark!

[Pablo]

Okay, are you the one in the blue shirt?

[Mark H]

You mean the one looking really thrilled to be holding an eight pound squid gut?

[sglover]

Terrific! Can you describe the pen a little more? How rigid is it? How dense? I'm surprised that it's so transparent....

[Mark H]

The best way I can describe it would be like holding a thin layer of fiberglass. It's flexible, not nearly as stiff as you would think considering the weight and size of the squid. When it dries out it then becomes brittle. It is made mainly out of chitin.

[Cyde Weys]

This is fascinating! I'd really like to see some larger photos though. I can't make out all of the detail.

[Chuckles]

Yeah, more pictures man.

[maru]

Very cool, and great pics!!

Does that qualify as a 'giant squid'?

[Mark H]

No, Maru. Giant squid are in the genus Architeuthis, which this isn't. These squid are known as flying or Jumbo squid as a group.

[shayera]

I'm endlessly fascinated by this! I think I've read this entry 5 times today.
Very cool.

[Dave]

Great article, Mark. And who would have guessed that your stomach picture had a higher approval rating than Nancy Pelosi at 26% and just three points lower than Hillary.

[Jim Donahue]

Didn't your readers vote for you to keep the beard last year? Why do you hate democracy?

BTW, I will never look at a plate of calamari the same way again.

[Monado]

Lovely. Fascinating.

Would one of you care to skip over to my blog and help to identify this squid / cuttlefish / kraken in a shop window? http://monado2.blogspot.com/2006/05/cuttlefish-mystery.html

I have only the ouside view of it but I can see tentacles with large suckers on the end.

[Amanda]

What an amazing story Mark!!!!
I think that it was cool that you were interested!!

[Manuel Romo]

What percentage of the total weight of a squid, is the pen?

[Mark H]

The pen is surprisingly light. This big one weighed less than a 1/4 lb.