Tag Archives: cuttlefish
Goodbye F/V Santiego, Hello F/V Diamond Lil
It’s always sad when an old lady of the sea is shipped off to far away waters especially when they’ve been a permanent sight in Port Douglas for decades. Such is the case with the FV Santiego, built in Brisbane and owned by her skipper Laurie Moull. The fishing trawler has been in operation for 21 years and to see her sail off into the sunset is tinged with sadness. The old girl is now in Innisfail with her new owners and their gain is certainly our 
loss, however skipper Laurie is like a kid in a candy shop because he has a new gal in his life. He’s bought a new vessel named ‘Diamond Lil’ and she’s a ‘BIG UN’. Laurie and the crew will be proudly showing off Diamond Lil this weekend at the Port Douglas public jetty when they sell their new season prawns tomorrow and Sunday. Photos, >click to read< 08:14
Falklands Squid – A Fisheries Management Success Story
A suite of conservation measures overturned a negative trend in squid abundance in the 1990s, turning this into a stable fishery with total annual catches ranging between 60,000 and 80,000 tonnes over the last three years. Most of these species have short life cycles with completely new generations joining the fishery every year. The annual turnover, together with climatic variability, results in high abundance fluctuations that make 
squid fisheries notoriously difficult to manage and risky for fishing companies and their production chains. >click to read< During seasons, the stock biomass of squid remaining is estimated by depletion models, which are continually updated with mandatory daily reports of catch and effort from trawlers. >click to read< 14:45
Exposure to pile driving noise associated with construction of docks, piers, offshore wind farms, cause squid to exhibit strong alarm behaviors
“This study is the first to report behavioral effects of pile driving noise on any cephalopod, a group including squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses,” says lead author Ian Jones, a student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography. Jones and his colleagues in the Sensory Ecology and Bioacoustics Lab at WHOI exposed longfin squid (Doryteuthis pealeii) to pile driving sounds originally recorded near the construction site of the Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island. >click to read< 11:52
Squid: Coming to Life – How a cephalopod is born, in stunning microscopy footage
Produced by the evolutionary and developmental biologist Nipam Patel in his Patel Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, Squid: Coming to Life literally puts squid and cuttlefish development under the microscope. With a sparkling soundtrack and stunning microscopy footage, the short video shows the cephalopods transforming from embryos (when they develop in egg capsules) to hatchlings that emerge with the resplendent, colour-shifting skin they use for communication and camouflage. click here to watch the video 09:35
Plymouth fish market brings in record-breaking £1million ($1,130,7796.43) haul in a week
Plymouth’s fish market has recorded its first £1 million week. The Sutton Harbour market’s sales in the first three days of the week alone were than higher than in the whole of 1994, the last year of the old Barbican fish market. And the final tally yesterday was £1,002,000. Trawlers poured in a bumper harvest through the week, with cuttlefish leading the charge. David Pessell from Plymouth Trawler Agents said they sold 195 tonnes of cuttlefish, worth £600,000, most destined for Spain and Italy. “We have had more than 120 boats landing to us this week,” Mr Pessell said.
UK Fishermen enjoy ‘black gold rush’ as demand for cuttlefish hits all time high
Fishermen from across the UK are flocking to the South West to land the inky mollusc – which is related to the squid – in record numbers. They are taking advantage of the lack of quotas with 100 tonnes being landed by just five or six boats. Last week a record £700,000 worth of cuttlefish was put through the tills at Brixham fish market in Devon with prices at an all-time high of £5 a kilo. And struggling British fishermen say they could be an unexpected saviour of the local economy. Skippers have descended on waters around Brixham from as far away as Scotland and Northern Ireland to take advantage. Many boats are being double crewed and only resting in port for the bare minimum of time to maximise the amount of they are able to catch. click here to read the story 09:16
Global population’s of squid, octopuses and cuttlefish are booming
The world’s squid, octopuses and cuttlefish have been going through a massive, 60-year population boom, a new study has found. Published yesterday in Current Biology, the study shows a continued rise in population numbers of cephalopods since the 1950s. It also reveals the boom has happened in 35 species of cephalopods – covering six families – around the globe. Earlier research has found cephalopods, which are highly adaptable to changing environments, may be benefiting from a combination of climatic changes, including global temperature rises. University of Adelaide researcher Dr Zoe Doubleday led the study and found that despite anecdotal reports indicating a “boom and bust” cycle in cephalopod populations, since 1953 there had been a sustained increase. Link to the study here 11:51
