Giant squid at spit causes excitement
A large giant squid has fascinated visitors after washing ashore at Farewell Spit.
Farewell Spit Tours guide Anton Donaldson came across the cephalopod while taking a group to the lighthouse last Friday.
‘‘We found a large white object at the top of the beach, which I presumed at the time was a large woolsack. But it turned out as we got closer, we could see it had tentacles, and it turns out it was a giant squid.’’
He stopped the bus so passengers could disembark to view the squid up close. Donaldson said they were excited, as it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a creature that lives hundreds of metres below the ocean’s surface.
The mantle to the end of its head measured about 4m, not including its tentacles, he said.
‘‘The tentacles had been gnawed at the end, so they didn’t taper to a point – it looked a little like they’d been perhaps eaten by creatures in the sea.’’
Donaldson said the squid was in otherwise good condition, and there were no clues as to why it might have washed up on the beach.
In the past 30 years or so, six or seven giant squid have washed up on Farewell Spit.
AUT marine biologist Dr Kat Bolstad runs the laboratory for cephalopod ecology and systematics – the Squid Squad – and said there were several reasons why giant squid, which usually lived at depths of about 500m, might wash up.
‘‘We hear about this maybe once a year, every couple of years, perhaps. We’ve had some in the last few years in Wellington, there was one in Kaikōura a few years ago.
‘‘It’s not unknown, but it’s always exciting when it happens.’’
Bolstad said it was possible that when an entire giant squid washed up, it had been caught in a fishing trawl and dumped back into the ocean. Bits of giant squid washing up were likely the remnants of a sperm whale’s meal.
She said the giant squid on Farewell Spit appeared to be in good condition, which indicated it had died recently.
‘‘People do get very excited about it, and rightly so. I mean, how often do you get to see a giant squid specimen in any kind of shape?’’
Scientists had been building a picture of giant squid biology for over 100 years, but there was still a lot to learn about them, she said.
It was not known how long they lives, what their egg masses looked like, and where they lived as young individuals (babies live at the surface, adults in the deep sea).
Bolstad said little was also known about their diet, other than that they ate small fish and squid.
Later this week, Bolstad and her team will be examining the stomach contents of a giant squid that was frozen earlier in the year.
‘‘A lot of squid seem to digest their food very, very quickly, especially the ones where the bodies are quite transparent, because having any kind of opaque stomach contents probably compromises their camouflage in the deep sea, so we think that they have very acidic stomach conditions.
‘‘If you don’t get to the stomach contents right away, or freeze them at least, decomposition happens very quickly and it’s quite hard to tell, even if there was something in there, what that had been.’’
AUT squid scientists, called teuthologists, have examined more than 50 giant squid in the past 20 years. These have usually been caught by accident in commercial fishing or research trawls, or washed up on beaches.
Giant squid grow up to 13m long and weigh up to 300kg. The females are larger than males at maturity, with males reaching about 10m and weighing about 200kg.