Sexy set-up for shifty squid

By KENT ATKINSON

New Zealand squid expert Steve O'Shea is to mount a new expedition next July to film "sex-crazed" giant squid in the wild.

Dr O'Shea plans to film about 600m below the surface off the West Coast, after squirting squid pheromones - sexual scents - into the ocean.

The extracts of male and female giant squid sex organs will be squirted from a remotely operated submersible, the latest New Scientist magazine reports.

He hopes the pheromones will attract squid long enough to film them.

"These things come into New Zealand waters to breed," Dr O'Shea said of the squid. "They're sex-crazed."

In a paper submitted to the New Zealand Journal of Zoology, Dr O'Shea and his assistant, Kat Bolstad, describe finding fragments of the end of a giant squid tentacle in the stomach of a female.

He said it probably was not intentional cannibalism - but the male had swept too close to a female's "beak" during mating and she ate it.

Six years ago, a squid expert at the Melbourne Museum, Mark Norman, and his colleague Chung-Cheng Lu investigated the first recorded mated female giant squid, and found sperm packages or "spermatophores" embedded in the skin of the female's arms, where it is stored until the female is ready to use it.

The pair said it seemed a male giant squid used its muscular elongated penis - up to 1.5m long - to "inject" sperm packages under pressure directly into the arms of females.

Since then, Dr O'Shea has found males implanted with their own spermatophores.

"If we are talking about a 200kg squid, this is an animal with a 20g brain," he told New Scientist.

"It's not very bright and it is trying to co-ordinate a metre-long penis.

"He's going to get a bit confused."

Scientists and film-makers from around the world - including a rival Smithsonian-led team funded by the National Geographic Channel - have been vying to become the first to film an adult giant squid.

In February 2001, Dr O'Shea's team, funded by the Discovery Channel, trapped some tiny squid larvae swimming 250km east of New Zealand which turned out to be Architeuthis larvae - the first ever caught - but they all died over the next three days.

"In retrospect," he told New Scientist, "everything we did was wrong."

Dr O'Shea said it now appeared the lighting, the prey they gave the larvae to eat and even the shape and material of the tanks were inappropriate.

Before they try again with giant squid larvae, they will experiment with the more common warty squid, Moroteuthis ingens.

If they succeed in raising that species, it might also answer some other questions about giant squid, such as their growth rates and lifespan.

By introducing a chemical tracer into the water in which a warty squid is growing, and later examining the squid's "statoliths" - bony growths which act as balance sensors - the team will be able to work out how frequently "rings" are laid down in the bone.

It is thought a female giant squid may grow to 13m in length and 275kg in weight in just two years.

Giant squid search

* An adult giant squid - thought to be bigger than a sperm whale - has never been seen alive.

* Scientists and TV crews are vying to be the first to film the creature.

* New Zealand squid expert Steve O'Shea's team is funded by the Discovery Channel.

- NZPA