California Attacked by Giant Squid!

No, I’m not being paranoid.  Jumbo squid are showing up in record numbers off the southern California coast.  And these suckers can get mighty big. 

Me, I love squid. To eat, that is.  My husband fixes me some that are not over four inches long — really cute little guys with tentacles. They secrete this inky stuff that makes a sweet and gentle taste for pasta. This is the time of year when folks come to San Diego and take cruises to watch whales.  They go down to Mexico to have their little whale babies because the water is a bit warmer.  I have done one of these cruises myself, and I saw some of the fountains coming out of blowholes and it was pretty awesome.  Me, I always look for the science.  But never did I see a squid – let alone hundreds of even thousands of them – and never did I get face washed by their ink.  The facts — well, we are talking up to six feet long and one hundred pounds.  I used to have at least a dozen little bitty ones with my plate of pasta.  I don’t think these would fit on my plate. Is it only me, generally fearless, or is this starting to sound a little scary?  Hmm, I’d say so.  Increased acidity of the ocean, gigantic squid coming up from the deep, and who knows what else. I am looking very hard for positives.  If people have more squid than they can eat, maybe we can feed the hungry.  Are they like zucchini?  I mean, does their meat get tougher the bigger they get?

This is another frightening example of global warming, folks.  We’ve got rising levels of carbon dioxide, which tends to make things more acidic.  The intrepid folks from Rhode Island went to California and actually did science with these big squid, which are going to get lethargic, and have trouble getting away from predators, and have trouble finding things to eat.  They are coming north, as far as British Columbia.

But who cares, as long as we don’t inconvenience our biggest polluters by hitting up their bank accounts for all the crap they dump into the atmosphere, right?  And climate change is a hoax, right Oklahoma Senator Inhofe?  Sigh. I am now in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I will look across the bay and wonder if there are any tentacles whipping around.  The take home message is that nobody knows what is going to happen with global warming — which is very real.  People have to stay comfortable.  But watch closely.