Squid

“ And the shores disappeared, and the water began to have a different and peculiar flavor—a flavor which seemed to the salmon much richer and more inspiring than the glacier-water of their native Cowlitz. And there were many curious things to see; crabs with hard shells and savage faces, but so good when crushed and swallowed! Then there were luscious squid swimming about, and, to a salmon, squid are like ripe peaches and cream for dinner. There were great companies of delicate sardines and herring, green and silvery, and it was such fun to chase them and to capture them! ”

“ Baker’s heels, expecting to see something quite unusual, a whale of enormous size, perhaps, or a large shark at least, or perhaps an enormous squid. I think I was inclined to the squid, for I had always heard of it, but I had never come across anybody who had seen one, and I was anxious to see a great squid with my own eyes—and at a safe distance.
As soon as I reached the deck I looked all around and saw nothing unusual—no squid, at any rate. The sun was not yet up, and the waters were heaving in slow swells, although the surface was calm and there was hardly enough wind for steerage way. ”

“ The beak of this immense fish—which could not have been much larger than the one we were contemplating from the deck of the Seamew—was as big as a six-gallon keg.
No animal can have a more formidable appearance, or a more deadly grasp, than these squid. It would seem as though the long, flexible, muscular tentacles were a sufficient means of defense and offense, without their being armed with the terrible suction cups. ”

“ It was here Harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. They were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "Squid O!" from Salters, and for an hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid- jig - a piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. The squid -for some unknown reason - likes, and wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he can escape from the pins. ”

“ A perfect description of the position and action of a squid swimming. "No portion of it perceptibly used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulations." The mode of propulsion of a squid—the outpouring stream of water from its locomotor tube—would be unseen and unsuspected, because submerged. Its effect, the swirl in its wake, would suggest a prolongation of the creature's body. The numerous arms trailing astern at the surface of the water would give the appearance of a mane. ”

“ The cuttle-fish is a sluggish creature, seeking out the darker corners of his grotto, and often lying motionless for long periods together. But not so the little squid. He does not thrive in captivity, and incessantly wings his way back and forth, with slow, wavy flappings of his filmy appendages, until he wears himself out and dies unreconciled. ”

“ With us the squid or cuttle-fish is harmless except to the sight, and in his native element is glad to hide himself in the obscurity of a dark liquid that he has the power of emitting, when pursued. The only bone in his body is in the middle of his stomach, and what it is put there for unless to give him an accurate idea of indigestion, no one knows. ”

“ Chromatophores, irregular cells in the mantle which give color to the squid. Exhalent siphon, a funnel or tube opening on the ventral side just below the base of the arms or tentacles. Pen, a remnant of an exoskeleton imbedded in the mantle along the dorsal side. Ink sac, a sac containing a dark, sticky liquid which may be thrown out through the funnel into the water. The opening is near the inner opening of the funnel. Observations. What is the shape of the squid? To what is this shape adapted? Identify the head and the well-developed eyes. How many arms or tentacles are there? ”

“ And one other characteristic the squid possesses which gives it advantage over both enemy and prey. When excited, and at will, it can eject a substance like ink—indeed, it was used by the ancients as ink—by which it clouds the sea, and so often escapes an enemy. ”

“ It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long. It was traveling backward with tremendous speed in the same direction as the Nautilus. It gazed with enormous, staring eyes that were tinted sea green. Its eight arms (or more accurately, feet) were rooted in its head, which has earned these animals the name cephalopod; its arms stretched a distance twice the length of its body and were writhing like the serpentine hair of the Furies. You could plainly see its 250 suckers, arranged over the inner sides of its tentacles and shaped like semispheric capsules. ”

“ All parts of the squid are cut up, and used as bait; what is not required the next day is thrown away or given to the pigs. In the northern district, between Cape Freels and Cape St. John, the fishing spots are at Robin’s Cave Head, and Friday’s Bay, on the anchorage ground. The fishing takes place about sun-down. The squid is of an oval form, and resembles somewhat our cuttle-fish, but it has no solid bone. The length of the body is from eight inches to a foot, and it is about two inches in diameter. ”

“ What can have got hold of him?” We called the doctor to come and see; and Jerry jumping on shore, gave up his place to him in the canoe. When the doctor, got over the spot, after a short examination he exclaimed, “Why, it is a monster cephalopod—a squid, a horrid polypus has got hold of him. Poor fellow, what a dreadful death to die! There can be no doubt how it happened. He must have stepped on the squid, which caught hold of him with its long and powerful tentaculas, and gradually infolding him in its dreadful embrace, dragged him under the water. What strength the creature must have! ”

“ A squid is a baby octopus, or "devil fish." The squid is caught by jigging up and down a lead weight filled with wire spikes and painted bright red. It seizes the weight with its tentacles. When raised into the boat it releases its hold and squirts a small stream of black inky fluid. ”

“ His keen eyes had caught the projecting tentacle of a squid. Even as he swam, the tentacle was lazily withdrawn, so that there was no sign of the creature. But the brief exposure of the portion of one tentacle had advertised its owner as a squid of size.
The pressure at a depth of forty feet is no joke for a young man, yet it did not seem to inconvenience this oldster. I am certain it never crossed his mind to be inconvenienced. Unarmed, bare of body save for a brief malo or loin cloth, he was undeterred by the formidable creature that constituted his prey. ”

“ The line, without a rod, is whirled round the head, and the squid delivered, without a splash in the water, if it so may be, and then dragged in hand over hand, the fish striking with his whole power, and being mastered by main force. ”

“ At a short distance from the actual extremity two flat fins project from the body, one on each side, as shown in Figs. 16 and 18, so that this end of the squid's body somewhat resembles in shape the government "broad arrow." It is a habit of these squids, the small species of which are met with in some localities in teeming abundance, to swim on the smooth surface of the water in hot and calm weather. The arrow-headed tail is then raised out of water, to a height which in a large individual might be three feet or more ”

“ In order to attract the squid, or cuttle-fish, which is often lured by a shiny object from the dark recesses in the great depths of the ocean, the jaw and inner side of the Brobdingnagian mouth are lined with a silvery membrane of phosphorescent whiteness, which is probably the only thing the squid sees when the dark body of the whale is at the great depths to which it sometimes descends for food. ”

“ The squid reach a length of twenty feet or more and the whale sometimes has terrific battles with its huge prey, the tentacles of which, armed with deadly suckers, tear long gashes in the skin of the head and snout, leaving white scars crisscrossed in every direction. In Japan I took several enormous spiny lobsters from the stomach of a sperm whale, as well as the remains of a shark and seventy or eighty yellow parrot-like beaks of the cuttlefish. ”

“ If squid could be obtained reasonably and in sufficient quantity, it would probably prove more valuable even than mussels. A fishing firm in Aberdeen last winter paid more than two hundred pounds for squid bait for a single boat's lines from October to December, and there are fifty such boats north of the Tyne. "Here is a nice little industry for any one who can capture or cultivate the common squid in quantity." Innumerable young mussels perish around the coasts every year for want of suitable objects to attach to. ”

“ Fig. 3 is the squid, also called the ink-pot, from the fact that when in danger he ejects a stream of ink-like fluid, which forms a black cloud in the water about him; through this he escapes from his enemies.
Fig. 4 is a cluster of squid eggs. The egg masses of the squid are always to be found on the island during the months of May and June. The eggs are inclosed in an elongated pod-shaped mass of jelly which, when held up to the light, reveals the outline of a number of small translucent eggs of a light yellow color. ”

“ The swordfish also feeds upon squid, which are at times abundant on our banks.
To what extent this fish is amenable to the influences of temperature is an unsolved problem. We are met at the outset by the fact that they are frequently taken on trawl lines which are set at the depth of one hundred fathoms or more, on the offshore [Pg 157] banks. ”

“ They feed entirely upon flying-fish and the small leaping squid or cuttle-fish, but love to follow a ship, playing around her, if her pace be not too great, for days together. Their flesh resembles beef in appearance, and they are warm-blooded ”

“ When near the bottom it is kept moving slowly up and down until a squid is felt upon it, when it is suddenly drawn to the surface with the squid attached. These squid, when caught, are used for bait, a single fishing smack being known to use as many as eighty thousand squids in a single season. ”

“ But before she could reach him, the squid looked up and saw her. On the instant his ten loose tentacles tightened to a rigid bundle which offered no obstruction to his progress; his pale sides contracted with a mighty convulsion, expelling a volume of water which shot him along with the speed of a torpedo from its tube; and at the same time, from a gland within the propulsion sac, he squirted forth a jet of inky fluid which spread at once into a great cloud of black, veiling [219] his flight. ”

“ The squid are the natural food of the sperm whale. Often the whale is so greedy for the squid that it tackles one of these giants and swallows the hard and indigestible beak which, causing a disease in the cetacean’s stomach, sometimes brings about the death of the gourmand. As parts of squid beaks have been found imbedded in masses of ambergris, scientists are quite convinced that this gormandizing of the sperm whale on squid is the immediate cause of that secretion in its stomach which, strange as it may seem, is the basis of many of the best perfumes. ”

“ Many of these mollusks are found off the coasts of Norway, Scotland and Ireland, and not a few have been recorded from the coasts of Nova Scotia and New England. In the larger of these animals the body is eight or ten feet long, the short arms eight feet and the long, tentacular arms thirty feet in length, making in all an animal nearly forty feet long when fully stretched out! The squid is greatly prized as bait and frequently a royal battle will take place between one of these gigantic creatures and a boat’s crew. ”

“ For bass, it is true, the natural squid is far more tempting, but this queer monstrosity is difficult to obtain, and its substitute has often captured enormous fish; for blue-fish{275} no other bait is ordinarily used, and for lake-trout the ivory squid can hardly be surpassed. The ordinary kinds are of lead, pewter, bone, which are often hollow, and admit the insertion of a large hook; and of pearl, the latter in its most killing shape having flanges and spinning like the minnow. ”

“ It must here be remarked, that as these head-footed mollusks are not "fish," any more than lobsters, crabs, oysters, mussels, &c., which fishmongers call "shell-fish," are "fish," the word "fish" is misleading, and should be abandoned; and secondly, that the names "cuttle" and "squid," as distinctive [Pg 12] appellations, are unsatisfactory. The word "cuttle" is derived from "cuddle," to hug, or embrace—in allusion to the manner in which the animal seizes its prey, and enfolds it in its arms; and "squid" is derived from "squirt," in reference to its habit of squirting water or ink. ”

“ The common Squid of our coasts, which furnishes the so-called Cuttle-bone, affords us a good example of Direct Action. I once hatched a number of young Squids from the grape-like eggs, and it was most curious to see how the little creatures shot about as soon as they escaped from the egg. ”

“ The sun rose high in the sky as the Esperance returned to the wharf. Davis went ashore and held lengthy conversations with Manila by short-wave radio. The biologists essayed to investigate the squid. La Rubia still attempted to catch fish. All efforts seemed to tend toward frustration.
When Terry walked over to see his victim at close range, he found the biologists balked by the mere huge size of the squid. There were literally tens of tons of flesh to be handled. Squid have no backbone, but a modified internal shell is important to biologists for study. The biologists wanted it. ”

“ To the eastward, menhaden and lobster are the favorite baits; in Pennsylvania and New York shrimp, crab, and squid; and in the Southern States killeys, herrings, and other small fish. The artificial baits are the eel-skin, imitation squid, and gaudy bass-fly. The eel-skin used mainly along New England shores is attached to a hand-line, and cast into and drawn rapidly through the boiling surf of{139} the ocean; the squid is towed with trolling tackle behind the sail or row boat, in the quiet waters of the Middle States ”