As I mentioned in my
first squid dissection diary, I missed the beginning of my staff's work on this incredible animal, so this entry should really be first. Now that I have all the photos together, here are the early stages of the project.
I posted that diary very late on a Friday night, so if you missed it check it out later to get more info.
This animal isn't a Giant Squid (which would be in the genus
Architeuthis). It's known as Ommastrephes bartramii, the Red Flying Squid, and is a member of the squid genus collectively known as "Jumbo Squid". Although it is normally found in very deep water, this animal sometimes rises to the surface to hunt and gets its name from its habit of leaping out of the water and sailing through the air in order to escape from predators.
It was caught by a local squid trawler off the coast of New England. Here's one of the crew holding this monster. (It died shortly after being landed, otherwise this guy would be pretty torn up by the teeth-lined suction cups on the tentacles.)
This trawler fishes for commercial Ilex squid, which is what you get when you order calamari in a restaurant. An average size Ilex is shown here next to the jumbo squid. Both are laying on the deck of the boat soon after their capture. The jumbo squid, we discovered once the stomach was opened up, was feeding on its smaller cousins.
Here she is stretched out on the floor of our lab next to another commercial species known as Loligo.
The dissection was done by my head biologist Rebecca (right) and our high school intern Mikayla. Here they have just opened up the mantle to expose all the internal organs and they start out by searching for the three hearts that all squid have.
Look at the size of the funnel just below the cut mantle. Squid move by jet propulsion, pressurizing water and shooting it out of the funnel. The pressure is enough to propel the animal dozens of feet through the air in order to escape sharks or toothed whales. Not many other predators would be able to kill one of these squid.
Here's a good view of all the exposed organs. The big red one in the middle is the liver. The two organs protruding from the sides are the gills.
This is a close-up shot of one of the gills.
This animal was caught as by-catch and not intentionally killed. Although this was a great experience for both my staff and our intern (as well as the boat crew, whose captain said this was the largest squid he has seen in his 25 years of fishing), I was sad to see that she was very gravid. The bottom part of the mantle was loaded with thousands of tiny yellow eggs.
The huge sac above is the stomach, and although I showed this pic in the last entry, I know you just can't get enough of partially digested jumbo squid stomach contents.