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That’s right, you heard me. The giant Humboldt squid, which mostly lives in low oxygen columns of water is edging its way closer to the LA coast and shallow ends of the sea. Feeding, in what are rightfully OUR commercial fishing grounds. Ugh!

What could be the cause of this mayhem??

“Oxygen-starved waters are expanding in the Pacific and Atlantic as ocean temperatures increase with global warming, threatening fisheries and other marine life, a study published [in May 2008] concludes.”

Threatening to some marine life, helping others to thrive. The low levels of O2 or “hypoxic, zones ” resulting in global warming has urged the squid to explore new territories that it may have not ventured into previously. And these squids are FEROCIOUS preditors.

That, coupled with over-fishing these grounds, leaves the marine life in these particular area strangled on both sides. Almost squezing them out of their habitat, cylces, and into possible exinction. And we;re talking about a whole lot of diverse marine life.

“Most of these [ hypoxic] zones remain hundreds of feet below the surface, but they are beginning to spill onto the relatively shallow continental shelf off the coast of California and are nearing the surface off Peru, driving away fish from commercially important fishing grounds, researchers have found.”

These Squids “can grow 6 feet long, appear to be taking advantage of their tolerance for oxygen-poor waters to escape predators and devour local fish.”

Layers of O2 have been depleting rapidly over the last 50 years.

A study in Germany states that the increase of Hypoxic waters, has the same effect of gases trapped in a greenhouse.

“lighter warm water creates a cap over the colder depths, making it less likely that oxygen-enriched surface water will mix with colder water. Other biogeochemical processes also rob oxygen from deeper waters, such as the decomposition and re-mineralization of dead plankton as it settles to the seafloor.”
“The trend, the study points out, eerily echoes a scenario that unfolded about 250 million years ago, when 95% of life on Earth went extinct after heat-trapping carbon dioxide spewing from volcanoes warmed the planet and the oceans became stripped of oxygen.

Francisco Chavez, a study coauthor and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, said that California can look to Peru for potential problems ahead. Peruvian authorities have struggled for a decade over a commercial fish called hake that is being squeezed between overfishing and oxygen-starved waters.”

“At some point, it’s going to push them up onto the surface,” he said.

Can you imagine, if squids could walk?

Eerie….