All About Squid

What are Squid?

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Cephlapoda

Order:             Teuthida
Squid are a type of cephlapods and there are around 300 species of squid. Squid have a distinct head, a mantle and arms. Squid have eight                    arms arranged in pairs and two longer tentacles that are used for hunting. Squid are strong swimmers and certain species can "fly" for short distances out of the water.

All bout squid and their body:

• Fin= These help squid change direction when they're swimming
• Mantle= This is the main part of the body; all the organs are inside here.
• Eye= Squids have well developed eye that allows them to see about as well as people.
• Arm= Squid have 8 arms that are covered in suction cups.
• Pen= The squid is related to other "shelled": animals like clams and snails. The pen is all that is left of the shell the squid's ancestors had.
• Suction cups= The suction cups help the squid hold onto food.
• Chromatophores= These spots change size to change the squid's color for camouflage or possibly communication.

Squid fin

Arms

Pen

Chromatophores

6 interesting facts about squid:

1. The earliest known ancestor of today’s squid is Kimberella, a tiny mollusk that looked like a jellyfish and lived about 555 million years ago.
2. Some ink that excretes from a squid can cause euphoria; a sensation in the human brain. 
3. Tiny deep sea squid known as Heteroteuthis can shoot out a cloud of light when frightened  This squid's nickname is "fire shooter". It can do this by a process of bioluminescence.
4. The largest species of squid is the Humboldt Squid which can grow up to 90 feet long (or so thought; hint hint, monster quest video). These squid are often found practicing cannibalism.
5. Some squid have the capability of turning themselves blood-red. They do this because the wavelength of this color does not travel far underwater so they can become practically invisible.
6. Squid have a very unique trait among them. Squid have three hearts.

All about our lab dissecting squid:

The most interesting thing i did in our lab was puncturing the eye-ball. It started spewing blood and red-orange liquid everywhere. It was disgusting but cool at the same time.

The most disgusting thing was the way the surface of the body felt. It was all slimy and "gooey". I washed my hands at least four times after the experiment because every time i rubbed my hands together, i felt the nasty ooze feeling on my hands.

What i really liked about the lab was that we (my group and everyone else) were free to do what we wanted during the dissection. We weren't instructed by anyone to do anything really specific. We had free time to do what we wanted and it was a great learning experience. What i didn't like very much was that we didn't have much time to inspect and study the squid. We had less than 30 minutes to do the experiment and it would've been nice to have a bit longer; maybe close to an hour.

The only thing i would change would probably be the disposal of the squid. I felt really bad just throwing away all that juicy, meaty, "yumminess" in the garbage. Next time, have the class cook some of the squid. That way it is not wasted. Yum!

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Whale Flukes

Why are whale flukes used to identify whales?


Many whales have patterns of black and white pigmentation
and scars on the underside of their tails that are unique to each
whale, just as fingerprints are to humans. Researchers document
the marks on the right and left lobes of the tail, or flukes, and rate
the percentage of dark vs. light skin pigmentation from 100 percent
white to 100 percent black.

Why do scientists need this data?

For scientific purposes, each whale that is sighted in any ocean, is assigned a catalog number. The unique scarring and
shading patterns also provide the inspiration for common names of whales.
Scientists can further use this way of tracking whales to learn more about their livelihoods as they do everyday.

What was the most difficult part of our lab?

Our class did a lab that helped us learn to identify whales by their flukes. In this lab, each team of two partners was given 4 photographs of whale flukes and they were required to match the corresponding whale to its corresponding fluke. The hardest part for me was not the matching  it was more of the pressure we received as we first started. The booklet we were given to match the whales was enormous. It has about 15 pages each page included 15 whale flukes. It was very overwhelming at first but never the less, we were able to get the task done quickly and correctly.

How could we change this lab to make it better?

I think we should've been given more difficult pictures of whale flukes to match. Many photos had whale flukes that were clearly easy to identify. I felt like it wasn't a big enough challenge for me. Perhaps if we would've recieved more than 10 photos to match, it would've been a better learning experience. One that is both challenging and educational but fun at the same time

Overfishing

What is over fishing?

Fishing with a sufficiently high intensity to reduce the breeding stock levels to such an extent that they will no longer support a sufficient quantity of fish for sport or commercial harvest or basically fishing too much to the point of extremely low population of adult fish.

Why is it a major concern?

Over fishing means you are fishing more than nature can produce. 3/4 of the world's fish stocks are being harvested faster than they can reproduce. Eighty percent are already in decline. Ninety percent of all large predatory fish – including tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod and halibut – are gone. Scientists are showing that if we continue with what we are currently doing, the fishing industry will collapse by the year 2050. Here are some staggering facts:

• Modern fishing vessels catch more than 108 million tons of fish yearly and 8 to 25% of this is discarded overboard; dead or alive
• This means up to 27 million fish are thrown out each year
• Equivalent to 600 fully filled Titanic 
• Dead victims are not only fish
• Every year, an estimated 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises die entangled in fishing nets, along with sea turtles
• Long line fisheries also kill seabirds
• Over fishing is responsible for endangering many sea life

How does it effect our daily life?

Coastal communities around the world depend on fish as their primary source of protein. Overfishing threatens their long-term food security in many countries.This in turn has impacts on the rest of the marine ecosystem. An example would be an increase of growth of algae in the coral reefs. For people who enjoy fish or seafood (me), this could lead to a huge impact on the amount or consumption we as society would be able to have.

How can you and I help?
For one thing, you must take action. We can protect our oceans and marine sources by urging the President and the Senate to work to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention which will help give the community a better chance to work together to help preserve our fragile ocean and marine ecosystems and environments.