If you want to see a video of this ceph in action, check out

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/squid011220.html

It is really bizarre and well worth watching.

Happy holidays,

Scott Jordan

-----Original Message-----
From:   Monfils, Paul [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Friday, December 21, 2001 7:17 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Interesting Mollusk Article from News Service

Large Squid Baffles, Amuses Scientists
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An enormous squid that grows 23 feet long and lives as
deep as three miles under the ocean, has baffled scientists with what they
call its strange looks and weird behavior. The squid have been spotted all
over the world -- in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian
oceans -- by undersea explorers using specially designed craft. "These are
real mystery," said Michael Vecchione of the National Marine Fisheries
Service and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. He
describes the squid in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "They behave
strangely but they also look really weird," he said in an interview.
Vecchione, who put together observations from several scientists working in
various countries, said no one has captured one of the odd squid yet, so it
has not been named. But its un-squidlike demeanor has Vecchione and other
biologists speaking in decidedly unscientific terms. "This is well beyond a
new species," he said. "New species are a dime a dozen. This is
fundamentally different." Vecchione said the squid do not act or look like
other squid, which tend to be quick-moving and highly visual. Instead of
having two arms and eight tentacles, the new squid has 10 appendages that
all look alike. "The really long skinny arms are so much longer than the
squid's body," he said. "We don't know of any cephalopod that has arms like
that." The squid were found at very deep depths -- one at three miles under
the ocean off the coast of Brazil, but most at between 6,000 and 10,000
feet. Vecchione, who looked at video taken by both robotic deep-sea
submersibles and a few taken by people aboard other submersibles, said the
squid did not move much at all. "Whenever the submersible came up on one, it
was in a characteristic posture, floating vertically in the water with the
arms spread out," he said. Texas A&M University oceanographer William Sager
is one of the researchers who photographed the squid in the Gulf of Mexico
while exploring in the deep-diving ALVIN submersible. "I had never seen
anything like this creature," Sager told Science. "It just hung there,
looking at us, as if suddenly seeing ALVIN float up like a whale with lights
was no big deal. We photographed and videotaped it for five to ten minutes,
and when we got to shore, we went looking for someone who could identify
it." Vecchione said it is not surprising that the animals are strange --
anything living at that depth, with the huge pressures, cold and lack of
light, would look different from creatures found at shallower depths. The
skinny tentacles may not be used to grasp prey -- which is what most squid
do with them -- but may be used like a net, instead, he said. "I think those
long extensions are really sticky," Vecchione guessed. "One of the animals
bumped into the submersible and got tangled up in it. The animal seemed to
have a problem letting go. It might go around waiting for small prey like
crustaceans to stumble into it and get stuck -- sort of like a living spider
web." The squid -- which should not be confused with giant squid, which are
an identified species, may be the adult forms of some juveniles found in
recent years, Vecchione said. These were named Magnapinnidae, which means
"big fins." "All the juveniles came from the Pacific and they came from much
closer to the surface -- 200 meters (650 feet) from the surface," Vecchione
said. "But it is not unusual for young to be near the surface and then go
deeper as they mature." Vecchione said the squid join an array of unusual
creatures being spotted for the first time as improved technology makes
underwater exploration more common. He hopes a program being started up by
the Washington-based Consortium on Research and Education to run a census of
deep sea life will reveal more about the squid and other deep-sea creatures.
"I think there are a lot of really strange things down there," he said.
"Every time someone goes down there and looks they find something really
strange. It's Eureka time."