More than 20 boats rocked off La Jolla, waiting for the night sky color to match the inky waters in the La Jolla submarine canyon. At the appropriate hour, stadium-strength lights beamed toward the water’s surface to attract a certain deep-water denizen. The ritual was repeated over two weeks this past winter, resulting in a 2,500-ton haul of the market squid Loligo opalescens. I’d never before seen such fishing pressure for the nocturnal mollusks.
Scuba divers hope each winter to witness the frenzy of a so-called “squid run.” I say “hope” because we can’t depend on it; some years the run is massive, some years paltry, and some years squid are no-shows. When on, the reproductive orgy generally occurs sometime between November and February, when the squid ascend from nearly 1,000-foot depths to briefly spawn in shallower waters (30 to 150 feet deep) before dying. Spawning may last a few days, a few weeks or even a few months.
The biggest squid run I’ve seen took place while scuba diving during the winter of 1989 to 1990. Every which way I turned, the foot-long animals were mating. So great was their density that I was bathed in them; their satiny bodies caressed my face and their fast, erratic movements inadvertently pelted my body. Seals, sea lions, bat rays, schooling fish, cormorant birds and myriad other marine life also joined the frenzy by some unknown signal. Depending on preference, the uninvited animals feasted on live squid or squid carcasses. Females release up to 28 cigar-shaped egg cases carrying about 200 individual eggs each. Using her tentacles to tie down the stringlike piece that protrudes from one end of the case, she attaches her cargo to algal strands or other egg case strings.
I continued to dive the area after it became a ghost town inhabited solely by snow-white drifts of eggs and a clean-up crew of scavengers. While squid larvae incubate, the egg cases themselves are a habitat other life uses for hiding and reproductive activities. After about a month, squid hatchlings chew their way out of their egg sacks and head to safer deep water, while the deflated cases disintegrate and the canyon hillside returns to its mudlike state.
Because squid are drawn to light like moths to a campfire, it’s not a question of whether fishers can catch squid in their nets but how many squid their nets can hold. According to Dale Sweetnam, California Department of Fish and Game senior marine biologist, fishers in 14 boats outfitted with nets (purse seines) making 70 landings reaped last winter’s La Jolla haul. Since the fishers work in pairs ” one boat to light and one with a net ” double the number of boats could be seen.
Sweetnam said, “California’s squid fishery was just a small fishery in Monterey until the mid-1990s, when it expanded to Southern California. Prior to then, people didn’t know what calamari was and didn’t want to eat squid. Captured market squid were mostly used as bait by party-boat fishers. Once there was a market based on demand, the fishery was created. The demand particularly came into play with the collapse of squid fisheries elsewhere in the world due primarily to overfishing.”
I too participated in the past squid run but as a scuba diver, and was surprised to see so many boats since I never saw enough squid to seemingly warrant such interest. By the time the squid fishers took their fill and departed (most of the boats are docked up north), the number of egg cases I saw laid down in the reserve didn’t remotely correspond to what I saw in 1989 to 1990. Back then, massive numbers of squid put down football fields of egg cases that extended continuously along the canyon’s rim. At that time, though, only one or two purse fishing boats participated. Other than notes written in my dive log, there are no official data to back up my claims. What is the future fate of our local squid populations? What kind of management do we have for squid? Will the population sustain itself or collapse? Next week, I’ll run the second part of this story.
” Judith Lea Garfield, biologist and underwater photographer, has authored two natural history books about the underwater park off La Jolla Cove and La Jolla Shores. www.judith.garfield.org. Questions, comments or suggestions? Email [email protected].