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Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Squid native to Mexico found off Washington coast
By ROBERT McCLURE
P-I REPORTER
Dan Penttila has been walking Washington's beaches for more than 50 years, made a career of studying small fish born there, and knows pretty much what to expect.
But he could hardly believe it when one day in January, he stumbled over a squid, a species normally found in the warm waters off Mexico and Southern California: the Humboldt squid.
The marine scientist steeped in the Puget Sound ecosystem knew the creature only from The Discovery Channel.
"I just happened to glance down at the waterline, and there it was," said Penttila, a biologist at the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "The head was mostly gone and the tentacles were just stumps. Something had eaten it, but it had been fairly recently because when I picked it up, the flesh responded to my touch."
Squid have the ability to change color, in this case from a dark gray-red to a lighter shade, when touched. Only a freshly killed squid still would exhibit that characteristic.
Hundreds of Humboldt squids washed ashore in southwestern Washington in October 2004. They first appeared off the Washington coast in August of that year, when the ocean was considerably warmer than usual. At the same time, Humboldts turned up as far north as Sitka, Alaska.
Before 1997, when the squid was first seen off Oregon, the species had never been documented north of San Francisco.
Humboldt squids are little known to scientists. They spend the daytime at great depths and are hard to study.
The squid Penttila found turned out to be a juvenile. Though they can grow to 6 feet and weigh 100 pounds, this one was about half that size, indicating that it probably hatched last spring.
And that has Penttila and other scientists curious: Did anyone else see one of these? And when those squids showed up in 2004, did they lay eggs somewhere?
P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com.