White Island Giant

We were on board Cova Rose and trolling from Cape Runaway to White Island one afternoon in late summer. We had hooked a marlin earlier that morning, but it had turned into an LDR (long distance release).

Then we spotted a large orange windy buoy on the edge of the White Island trench just a couple of miles east of the island. We always investigate these, as most have been lost from commercial vessels and are fair game to junk collectors like me. Besides that, floating objects often attract and hold fish like mahi mahi. The buoy belonged to the Waihau Bay based longline boat ‘Ma Duke’ and had gear attached so we left it.

Squid are the only organisms that use jet propulsion to move. Water is sucked into the mantel and is squeezed out in a controlled jet. They can even propel themselves right out of the water using this propulsion system. I well remember having three or four small squid land on the decks of Cova Rose when trolling past the Volkner Rocks, obviously attempting to escape a predator that lurked below.

Squid are also highly cannibalistic! So if they encounter a lack of food when making a long migration, they just turn on each other. As long as some of the school gets to where they are going, I guess that’s all that matters.

Warty squid, which is what we found, are one of the so-called giant squid. Not the ship-attacking squid the size of a bus that legends are made of, but with a mature female weighing over 5kg and measuring one to two metres long, they are plenty big enough.

While not a lot is known about these large deep-water squid and their habits, they definitely form an important component in the southern ocean ecosystem. They live in depths of 400-1500 metres and are known to form a large part of the diet of sperm whales.

Reproduction is very interesting but not fun for the female. Apparently the female produces a huge ovary the size of a football, while at the same time undergoing a dramatic tissue breakdown where all the muscle is lost from their body wall. They spawn and then die. Even though they are a deep-water species, spent individuals most probably float to the surface where they become an important food source for sea birds such as albatross.

This pretty much explains what we found that day off White Island. A female warty squid had floated up from the depths after spawning and had become food for the birds.