Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Hunting giant squid babies

The New Yorker writes about a giant squid hunter!
Steve O’Shea, a marine biologist from New Zealand, is one of the hunters—but his approach is radically different. He is not trying to find a mature giant squid; rather, he is scouring the ocean for a baby, called a paralarva, which he can grow in captivity. A paralarva is often the size of a cricket.
“Squid, you see, hatch thousands of babies,” O’Shea told me recently, when I called him at his office at the Earth and Oceanic Sciences Research Institute, at the Auckland University of Technology. “Most of these will get eaten up by larger predators, but during periods of spawning the sea should be filled with an absolutely fantastic amount of these miniature organisms. And, unlike the adults, they shouldn’t be able to dart away as easily.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say I need more information on how the babies arrive I'm assuming if it says 'hatch' that must mean it comes out of an egg? plese give me more information. Thanks Karrie