And that was a Humboldt squid, a juvenile Humboldt squid, about three feet long.

Starving the Squid

How many arms does a squid have?

I want to eat squid this evening.

Edith Widder How we found the giant squid

It was Mike that got me invited to the squid summit, a gathering of squid experts at the Discovery Channel that summer during Shark Week.

In the next bit, we're going to see a couple squid.

What was not mentioned in the Discovery documentary was that the bait squid that Dr. Kubodera used, a one meter long diamondback squid had a light attached to it, a squid jig of the type that longline fishermen use, and I think it was this light that brought the giant in.

The varieties landed are tuna, bonito, mackerel, squid, shark, lobster and shrimp.

So, imagine a great white shark and a giant squid in the same bathroom.

Whereas the other three piles were dead, dark and stinky, and the PAH's the aromatic hydrocarbons went from 10,000 parts per million to less than 200 in eight weeks.

These are squid. Now males, when they fight, if they're really aggressive, they turn white.

This little squid is called the fire shooter because of its ability to do this.

Again, another plug for the animals in the ocean, Vibrio fischeri lives in this squid.

So, the mycelium becomes saturated with the oil, and then, when we returned six weeks later, all the tarps were removed, all the other piles were dead, dark and stinky.

Bingo! Now I'm told that's not just a squid phenomenon with males, but I don't know.

This is something that my people at SQUID Labs are working on at the moment, called electronic rope.

The reason the squid is willing to put up with these shenanigans is because it wants that light.

Humankind has been looking for the giant squid since we first started taking pictures underwater. But the elusive deep sea predator could never be caught on film. Oceanographer and inventor Edith Widder shares the key insight and the teamwork that helped to capture the squid on film for the first time.

What the squid has developed is a shutter that can open and close over this specialized light organ housing the bacteria.

You hear about giant squid and things like that, but some of these animals get up to be approximately 140, 160 feet long.

For example, this shrimp releases its bioluminescent chemicals into the water just the way a squid or an octopus would release an ink cloud.

A lot of them can release their luciferin or luferase in the water just the way a squid or an octopus will release an ink cloud.

The way that this symbiosis works is that this little squid lives just off the coast of Hawaii, just in sort of shallow knee deep water.

And as the day goes by the bacteria double, they release the molecule, and then light comes on at night, exactly when the squid wants it.

I gave a talk on unobtrusive viewing and optical luring of deep sea squid in which I emphasized the importance of using quiet, unobtrusive platforms for exploration.

The squid is nocturnal, so during the day it buries itself in the sand and sleeps, but then at night it has to come out to hunt.

But then if you think about it, the squid has this terrible problem because it's got this dying, thick culture of bacteria and it can't sustain that.

Now the bacteria are dilute, that little hormone molecule is gone, so they're not making light but of course the squid doesn't care. It's asleep in the sand.

And there are a lot of different animals that can do this There's jellyfish, there's squid, there's a whole lot of different crustaceans, there's even fish that can do this.

On bright nights when there is lots of starlight or moonlight that light can penetrate the depth of the water the squid lives in, since it's just in those couple feet of water.

Eighty six seconds after it went into its pinwheel display, we recorded this This is a squid, over six feet long, that is so new to science, it cannot be placed in any known scientific family.

And it opens and closes the shutter so the amount of light coming out of the bottom which is made by the bacterium exactly matches how much light hits the squid's back, so the squid doesn't make a shadow.

Then he meets the yeti crab, the famous vampire squid elusive, hard to find and the Dumbo octopus, which looks so much like a cartoon in real life that really didn't have to change a thing when I drew it.

Beaches, mostly in Mexico but to some extent also in the United States, were hit, and birds succumbed in large numbers, despite the dispersion efforts. Because of the dispersion, shrimp, squid, and some fish populations suffered, with fisheries hit even harder.

Mike deGruy was also invited, and he spoke with great passion about his love of the ocean, and he also talked to me about applying my approach to something he's been involved with for a very long time, which is the hunt for the giant squid.

So for the deep sea squid hunt, I proposed using an optical lure attached to a camera platform with no thrusters, no motors, just a battery powered camera, and the only illumination coming from red light that's invisible to most deep sea animals that are adapted to see primarily blue.

And so what happens is every morning when the sun comes up the squid goes back to sleep, it buries itself in the sand, and it's got a pump that's attached to its circadian rhythm, and when the sun comes up it pumps out like 95 percent of the bacteria.

BERKELEY Is America s financial sector slowly draining the lifeblood from its real economy? The journalist Matt Taibbi s memorable description in 2009 of Goldman Sachs a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money still resonates, and for good reason.

And these two males are fighting, they do it by bouncing their butts together, which is an interesting concept. Now, here's a male on the left and a female on the right, and the male has managed to split his coloration so the female only always sees the kinder gentler squid in him.

What you are looking at is the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid, and it's been turned on its back, and what I hope you can see are these two glowing lobes and these house the Vibrio fischeri cells, they live in there, at high cell number that molecule is there, and they're making light.

It is far too early to assess the ecological damage and economic losses to fisheries and tourism from the Deepwater Horizon spill. It is a safe bet that shrimp and squid populations will suffer, as they did in the Ixtoc case, but so is a close to complete recovery within a limited number of years.

The reason that the electronic jellyfish worked as a lure is not because giant squid eat jellyfish, but it's because this jellyfish only resorts to producing this light when it's being chewed on by a predator and its only hope for escape may be to attract the attention of a larger predator that will attack its attacker and thereby afford it an opportunity for escape.