We're going to need a bigger deep-fryer

For the last four days, squid-enamored scientists have been thawing, examining and preserving a colossal squid at Te Papa museum's research centre. Being a layperson, I wasn't allowed in, and in fact know less about this project than the people who watched it all on webcam. However, being a Wellingtonian, I was able to go to the lectures today which took advantage of having so many wonderfully interesting calamari-scented individuals in one city on the same day as the monthly science cafe.

I arrived for the third lecture, on low-light vision. This was given by two swedish vision specialists in town to look at the largest eye ever recorded. They showed how deep-sea vision works, how it can be foiled, and then moved on to land animals. The interesting thing was the research done on nocturnal colour vision; we don't have it, we never thought to look for it in anything else, and now we've found it, we suspect it might be everywhere. They also showed more unorthodox kinds of visual systems, like the box jellyfish, which has four sensory clubs which argue over who's got the best picture; sort of a democratic decision-making process.

Dr Steve O'Shea was next. He's famous for trying to capture giant squid juveniles and raise them for the discovery channel. He's also New Zealand's go-to guy for giant and colossal squid. He told us all sorts of fun things such as how difficult it is to get rid of a giant squid once every museum in transport distance has a specimen, why the gardens of Upper Hutt and Karori are so fertile, why you should never ever dump a floating sea creature back into the sea to get rid of it, especially if you're the only squid expert around, and why the rubbish collectors in Auckland hate squid research. He then moved on to other topics, and I found out that 1)giant squid taste awful, 2)just about everything eats squid and 3)trawling is BAD. For example, the common arrow squid breeds by producing a two-metre ball of jelly with eggs in it, which then floats at the same level that trawlers trawl for common arrow squid... Dr O'Shea also described his work for conservation, ensuring that future generations can also eat calamari.

Dr Tsunemi Kubodera, "Ku" to his friends, showed some of the absolutely amazing footage the Japanese researchers he's leading have been getting. The giant squid was the one everyone wanted to know about, but the videos of Taningia danae, a large deep-sea squid though not as big as the giant squid, were even more amazing. This squid doesn't have a tentacle, just eight arms, but it still catches its prey between the third and fourth arms, which is where the tentacle would be. The research on giant squid shows that tentacles tend to get torn off or damaged, so perhaps T. danae has developed a more robust system. It also has two photophores, one on the end of each second arm (R(ii) and L(ii)), which is used to frighten prey when it conducts its curving attack run, swooping past the prey from one direction with the lights showing, then switching off and turning on its prey from a different direction... very devious attack strategy. Videos of the squid interacting with a pair of simulated photophores also showed that these squid use them to communicate with others of the same species. Dr Kubodera also showed video of giant squid, showing their coloration, which indicates that they were not evolved for such depths, but are more closely related to shallow-water squid and have moved deeper as they got bigger, and are still in the process of becoming adapted to the depths. He's currently in the process of analyzing this video to calculate the squid's speed based on the power of its jets.

Finally, the main event was a science cafe where the scientists who took part in the thawing, particularly Dr O'Shea, answered questions about colossal and giant squid. They were all showing their exhaustion by now, having been working for four days on the squid, but some interesting points still came up. The specimen indicates that colossal squid are slow swimmers, with two layers of chromatophores possibly giving them chameleonic abilities, and wide variation in weight and beak size. Dr O'Shea will probably find out my name, hunt me down and slap me for this, but he mentioned the extremely tentative possibility - though without going on a limb and advocating it, of course - that colossal squid, which lack the gel-producing glands necessary to make egg masses, might brood their young live in their large, flabby mantle. Currently only females have been found, and they seem to grow wider but not longer as they get older, which would match this theory, and the low number of eggs in the ovaries would also accord with the strategy of producing fewer young, but caring for them into young-adulthood. Most squid follow the opposite strategy, so this is extremely unlikely but an interesting possibility.

Several more questions were asked, mostly general questions about large squid, but one thing that came up was that the scientists had all tasted the flesh of the squid. This was of course to determine whether or not it was ammoniacal, which would impact upon the preservation process, but all the scientists tested it...

A consensus was reached that it didn't taste so bad, but neither was it a taste sensation, and the noted conservationist Dr O'Shea ventured the opinion that the texture was similar to that of crocodile.

Shark gets confused, bites sexagenarian

Shark Kills Triathlete

Poor guy... one minute he's swimming along, next thing he's kicking, but nothing's happening. At least he got a good go of it, still doing triathlons at 66...

And what about the shark? He thinks he's going to get a nice juicy seal, next thing he's chomped down on two sticks of jerky.

Yes, that's the theory; sharks eat people because we look like seals when we wear black wetsuits. Which raises the question: why do we wear black wetsuits?

So far as I know, there's no flourescent green seal. There's no yellow-and-red striped seal. If we added glowing strips - which must be possible with today's technology, possibly some sort of LED - we wouldn't even look the same in the dark. Nature uses colour codes to say "do not eat", why can't we?

So anyway, condolences to the family on their loss, along with this blogger's wish that they found a charitable research organisation to create wetsuits that don't look like seals.

OMFSM

I just had to share this with my currently non-existent readership:



How cool is that?

One has to wonder what the inhabitants of these galaxies are thinking. Of course, this is the normal state of being for them, and two galaxies can pass through each other without a single collision between stars, but still...

I can remember the first time I heard some amazing ideas, like the size of our galaxy. It's part of what drives my love for science. Imagine how many more kids would have their imaginations fired by the idea that our home is colliding with a giant conglomeration of stars.

Actually, don't imagine it. I want to see this mentioned in every primary school class in the world. Show those pictures. It can't hurt a bit.

via wired.com

The problem of beginnings

This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps... no, wait, it's not even the end of the beginning. It's the beginning of the beginning.

And that's a pretty cool place to be. This could become anything.

But for now, I should tell you what it is, so when it changes, you can spot the difference.

My name, for the purposes of this blog, is Wazza. It's a persistent pseudonym; I also use it when I comment over at scienceblogs, and I expect most of the readers of this first post will be familiar with it, since they'll have clicked the link wrapped around it there to come here.

No, I'm not going to tell you my real name.

I'm an atheist, a liberal, and (to use the terminology introduced to me by dear old Randall Munroe) a sciencer. This means that:

1) I don't believe in any god
2) I will, however, defend to the death your right to believe in a god
3) I apply the principles of science in my everyday life, but slept through too many chemistry lectures to become an actual professional scientist
4) I'll be amongst the first up against the wall when the Dominionist revolution comes.

Atheism

I think you guys all get what atheist means. It means not believing in any gods, as opposed to not believing in all gods except the ones in your particular faith. Some of you may think of us as amoral monsters, because the Divine Command theory of morality makes sense to you. It doesn't to me. If I'm not following a moral code I really believe in in and of itself, am I truly being moral? Atheism means following more or less the same moral code as the more enlightened christians (with maybe a little more lee-way in areas which are called immoral but don't actually hurt anyone), but doing it because you think it's right, not because god told you to. Unless you decide a different moral code is right, but personally, I base my moral code on

Liberalism

in particular, the modern kind that still rejoices in that name in the US as opposed to classical or neoliberalism, the two kinds which together make up the philosophy known as conservative. What this means is that I believe that people should be allowed their freedom, so long as the exercise of their freedom does not infringe on the freedom of others. Once it does, the government is allowed to infringe upon their freedom in order to protect others' freedom. I also believe that any definition of freedom includes freedom from fear (necessitating a police force), freedom from illness (necessitating public health), and freedom from starvation (necessitating some sort of government support scheme for the unemployed and unemployable). Libertarians are, in my estimation, idiots. Yes, enjoying untrammeled freedom is all very well and good, but what happens when there's a disaster? Who funds the rescue effort? Who cleans up afterwards? I ask a lot of questions like this. It's one small part of being a

Sciencer
Like a scientist, but without the lab coats.

As for my personal details, I'm straight, single and studying at university. I'm not going to tell you any more, because being hunted down by people with agendas is bad for my health.

Readers of Pratchett will remember that the problem of beginnings is that there's always a before. I have another blog, but it's more personal and includes my real name. Don't try to hunt it down. Please?