[News]: Scientists trying to identify large squid - The News-Press

octobot

octobot

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Nope, this is definitely a new story. There's nothing on MOTE's marine laboratory website about this, but I suppose that's not too surprising as the incident has only just happened. We have to keep an eye on this story in the latter half of next week following the autopsy. Doesn't appear to be Archi...does anyone know which large squid frequent the waters of Florida and would hazard a guess as to the ID?
 
a few months ago i was curious and rans down a list of the bigger (meter plus) squids i knew to see how big they get on the east coast... the only thing i found down my way (below hatteras) mentioned was archi coming out of the deeps.... though i admit it could have beeen a more exhausitive search...

edit:

ok here's a list from cephbase of west central atlantic squid, ml = 50+ cm

Archi 600
Taningia 140
Thysanoteuthis rhombus 100
Pholidoteuthis adami 78
Pholidoteuthis boschmai 60
Loligo vulgaris 64
Loligo pealeii 50
Ommastrephes bartramii 50

obviously the first two would be kinda easy to spot... at the moment my connection wont let my pull up TOL to check out rhombus...
 
still can't pull up TOL, but in Cephs of the World by Nesis, Thysanoteuthis rhombus is described as being short armed, so if there's any truth to the 13 foot estimate, i think we could rule it out....

"The tail section was gone; it had no tentacles, so I can't speculate what the overall length was,"

this sentance bothers me... is it missing parts from both ends? only 8 armed? or were the arms missing too? maybe i'm just not reading it correctly...

:hmm:
 
WhiteKiboko;88515 said:
still can't pull up TOL, but in Cephs of the World by Nesis, Thysanoteuthis rhombus is described as being short armed, so if there's any truth to the 13 foot estimate, i think we could rule it out....

"The tail section was gone; it had no tentacles, so I can't speculate what the overall length was,"

this sentance bothers me... is it missing parts from both ends? only 8 armed? or were the arms missing too? maybe i'm just not reading it correctly...

:hmm:
Click to expand...

I always assume that journalists and laypeople will be completely random about front and back when discussing cephs. Many seem to assume that the mantle and head are all "the head" so maybe the rest is "tail" by analogy to coin flips, or something. I also usually assume that arms, legs, and tentacles will be used interchangeably without any sense that the arms and tentacles are different.

Of course, I'd expect MOTE researchers to know better, but they may have been misconstrued by the journalist. I'm guessing this means that they got the mantly and maybe part of the head, but that all arms and tentacles and some unspecified part of the head were missing, but I could be completely wrong...

Was Debi the cuttle researcher from MOTE who was at TONMOCON I? I couldn't remember that woman's name afterwards...

If so (and maybe even if not) perhaps she'd be willing to send some pics of the animal, and maybe give Steve, Kat, and the TONMO peanut gallery a shot at ID?
 
no, it's working now.... thanks anyways.... plus there was a diagram in Nesis... (plus the name is a tad descriptive :smile:)
 
Squid necropsy
[SIZE=-1]The News-Press, FL - 15 hours ago[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Send us any digital photos you've taken by uploading them here. When you upload your photos, make sure to include a caption about what's happening in each ...[/SIZE]


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Andrew West/news-press.com
[SIZE=-1]The News-Press, FL - 15 hours ago[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]SARASOTA — Blotchy-purple and stinking of formilin, the big squid lay on the necropsy table at Mote Marine Laboratory this week like something from “The X ...[/SIZE]


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Aha! All is now revealed.

The mysterious squid in question turned out to be a 24ft example of the chiroteuthid squid Asperoteuthis acanthoderma, a rare(?), long and very tapering squid. Some excellent images are available here. For background data, as usual the Tree of Life has come up trumps with detail on the genus. In fact the pictures just released are somewhat better than the TOL images.

An excellent companion piece is available here featuring an interview with the researchers from MOTE who examined the carcass. It turns out that this is a very important discovery as it is the first time Asperoteuthis has been recorded from the Atlantic; prior to this find these chaps are not known outside the Pacific.
 
Thanks for closing the loop on this one Phil. It will be interesting to discuss this with the MOTE folks when we visit them in June!
 
Got a chance to see this earlier in the week. The actual specimen was only about 2 meters long, but part of the mantle was missing.

Also, FWIW, it's Mote, not MOTE. Not an acronym, but actually the last name of a major benefactor of the lab.

Hope to go over this and some of the other big squid when you folks visit later this year. Debi has been working on some cephalopod displays in our Mollusk Hall to go along with Molly.
 

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