[News]: Very Large Colossal Squid Caught

[monty]

I am just tired of constantly justifying the sort of research we do when there is no obvious actual or perceived immediate value.

There is so much commercially driven research undertaken today; it is stiffling creativity.

If it helps any, I may just look like a novice, but I posted a few comments here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/colossal_squid.php explaining why I thought this find is exciting, interesting, worthwhile, useful, and such. I'm sure you either already know or can poke holes in all of what I said, but perhaps my naive enthusiasm can evoke a laugh in your bitter frustration, or something? Plus, some other commenter said to ask you about the time you left a squid on your desk when you went on holiday and made a large olfactory impression on the whole lab, or something like that...

but, although I agree with that OpEd that the fickle public just has a momentary flash of interest in giant squids when they appear on the media, there is really some significance to your work.

 

[pipsquek]

Steve, check out this guy, John Taylor Gatto, he has a lot to say about what school should be and what it was designed for. Thirty years teaching in New York, teacher of the year a few times, and now he blasts the whole idea of compulsory school out of the water, saying that is designed to create a controllable herd.

I wish there was one teacher like him in every public school, since he routinely allowed his students to get jobs in something that they were interested in instead of sitting in class without the admin ever knowing about it.

Colossal.

 

[Heather Braid]

I am just tired of constantly justifying the sort of research we do when there is no obvious actual or perceived immediate value.

There is so much commercially driven research undertaken today; it is stiffling creativity.

I don’t understand why anyone would have to justify why they research squid. People research a lot of different things without there being apparent value for it (like history or physics). Squids are fascinating, and there is so much unknown about them. Why would anyone not want to know more about something that we share a planet with?

 

[Danno]

Neat, I'm learning a lot, thanks guys.

 

[OB]

La science pour la science, with you lot all the way! So.... back to Clem's deflated eye theory? Isn't the squid's inner eye also vitreous, in which case it would not leak away? Isn't this maybe sexual dimorphism, rather?

 

[monty]

La science pour la science, with you lot all the way! So.... back to Clem's deflated eye theory? Isn't the squid's inner eye also vitreous, in which case it would not leak away? Isn't this maybe sexual dimorphism, rather?

One of the major taxonomic criteria for squids is the presence or absence of a cornea: Decapodiformes so in the case of Mesonychoteuthis, which is in Oegopsida (as is Architeuthis), there is no cornea. I think this means that the inner eye is open to seawater, so the area that has vitreous humor in humans is just sea water in the cornea-less taxa, but I can't find a specific reference to whether there's some sort of humor-like stuff that's just not sealed from seawater, or whether it's just filled with seawater...

Anyway, without coreneas, I'd expect the eyes to either drain or dry out, but I don't know that "popping" is an issue since they're not sealed anyway.

 

[Clem]

Monty, that is very interesting, what a good find. Is part of the interior of the brachial crown also open to seawater? Will there be a Colossal Squid Necroscopy II? It'd be sweet if there were a way to stabilize a relatively intact drained eye and temporarily re-inflate it, to get a sense of the shape and volume....dunno, put the eye in a tank of saline, insert a balloon and slowly inflate the ballon with water? Many question marks, the eyes being two big ones, but I'm also looking forward to learning more about the siphonal structure.

Cheers,
Clem

 

[monty]

Monty, that is very interesting, what a good find. Is part of the interior of the brachial crown also open to seawater? Will there be a Colossal Squid Necroscopy II? It'd be sweet if there were a way to stabilize a relatively intact drained eye and temporarily re-inflate it, to get a sense of the shape and volume....dunno, put the eye in a tank of saline, insert a balloon and slowly inflate the ballon with water? Many question marks, the eyes being two big ones, but I'm also looking forward to learning more about the siphonal structure.

Cheers,
Clem

I don't know if there's a standard way to re-inflate the eyes, but I assume that our Teuthologist friends know more... I get tens or hundreds of hits when I google for info on dissecting and preserving squids, so I'll just wait until Steve, Kat, and others who have probably read all that stuff chime in. It's not obvious from anything I've read what the "open to seawater" aspect actually entails... if it is a very low-flow opening, for example, and if the eye's shape is maintained by some sort of elastic or rigid shape of the eyeball, or if there's some kind of gelatinous goop that is just in contact with the seawater, or what.

From tolweb, I gather that non-squid coleoids, except for spirula, tend to either have corneas or evidence that they once did (mentioned on the octopodae page), so I'm not sure how this works in squids. Nixon & Young don't mention corneas at all in their discussion of ceph eyes, as far as I can tell, which seems odd, since they do discuss retinas and the optic nervous system quite a bit.

I should credit Hallucigenia with spotting the cornea thing in tolweb and pointing it out to me a month or two ago, so I really just remembered when this came up... but I suppose the real credit goes to the folks who put tolweb together!

 

[Cairnos]

to TONMO, Cairnos! Since your profile says you're with the ministry, I'm wondering if you have any inside scoop... :

Unfortunately not really. I work next door to the observer group and my boss got the job of coordinating what was done with it but I haven't seen any other pics than those that were released. The ships crew are more likely to have additional pictures/footage. There are some other pictures floating around but they relate to a previous capture by a different boat.

 

[Tintenfisch]

Clem, I like your thinking, but actually I think the head is the same size relative to the mantle in both photos - it's just that in the first photo (on the left), the head is off to the side (completely to the right of the dorsal midline, marked in white dotted line - you can see the 'bump' in the anterior margin that marks the midline), with the nearer (left) half of the mantle in shadow and submerged so that you almost can't see it (entire mantle width, as I see it, marked in yellow). In the second photo (on the right) the head is centered so you can properly see how narrow it is. To me, this specimen's head (in both photos) looks much smaller relative to the mantle width (head width (HW, marked in green)

 

[Tintenfisch]

OK. It is possible (and seems likely) that we way overestimated the Mesonychoteuthis eyes in the Discovery model. Unfortunately there are no good lateral head-shots of this or any other Meso specimen (that I know of), so we don't know for sure. What we do know is that other somewhat closely related cranchiids have very large, very googly, very delicate eyes (see attached shots of preserved Teuthowenia (pellucida I think?))... IF Meso had eyes like this, then it seems likely they might have been damaged on the way to the surface or at the surface, through contact with the longline/hooks, the side of the ship, or the gaffs, prior to the photographs. When the eyes are damaged/ruptured/deflated, sometimes you get a flaccid deflated balloon of an eyeball, but more often in preserved specimens I have just seen an empty eye socket. So it is possible that Meso has big googly eyes and hence a much wider head in life than it appears in these photos.
Either way, the head/eyes of the 2003 specimen were so mangled as to prevent any useful reconstruction, yet the head width still appears similar to that of the mantle. Whether the present specimen's eyes are gone or intact, its head appears relatively far narrower...
Guess we just have to wait to see it!!

 

[tonmo]

Thanks Tintenfisch -- very insightful and makes sense. Handsome pics too...

 

[Tintenfisch]

Handsome pics too...

Yeah, lovely, why wouldn't anyone want to study squid?

 

[WhiteKiboko]

Handsome pics too...

Except for the critter in the top pic, using what looks like mesh to act like groucho...

 

[OB]

It's the fluorescent lighting reflecting, but I like the way you're thinking