Divers in San Diego, California, USA, are frightened by the huge squid that sailed last week to the Pacific coast where the city is located, according to the BBC
Humboldt squids (Dosidicus gigas), with a powerful beak, reach two meters in length. Their weight reaches 45 kg.
California divers have reported encounters with these carnivores, which are sometimes aggressive.
Diver Shanda Magill described how a rust-colored animal snatched her swimming apparatus and flashlight from her and grabbed her with its tentacles.
“I started kicking like crazy,” Shanda Magill admitted. “The first thing you think, God, I don’t know if I’ll survive. This squid could easily hurt me if he wanted to."
According to local experts, these squids have a beak like a large parrot, and they can easily pull a piece out of a human body.
Humboldt squids usually do not disturb people, as they swim at a considerable depth. But sometimes dozens of these animals are thrown ashore by waves.
At the same time, he notes that there are known cases of giant squid attacks on humans.
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David Duncan, an employee of the American Museum of Natural History, during an expedition to the shores of Peru and Chile, observed how huge dozidicus nibble on steel lines. A pierced spiky squid gnaws at it with its beak with such fury that only chips fly. Dozidicus hunt four-pound tuna and eat the giant fish clean.
Although Humboldt squid usually live much further south - off the coast of Mexico, Chile, similar invasions of squid off the coast of California took place in 2002 and 2005.
The most amazing thing is that a few years ago two-meter squids were seen off the coast of Alaska. These anomalies are troubling environmentalists.
Russ Vetter of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believes climate change is to blame. The rise in Pacific temperatures removes the need for squid to migrate south when winter arrives. Another possible reason is the sharp decrease in the population of shark hunting squid as a result of active fishing.
This phenomenon worried scientists so much that now they catch individual individuals of the dosidicus squid and equip a special monitor that tracks all its movements in the future.
In the summer of 2007, a deep-sea squid about 4 meters long and weighing 250 kg was thrown onto the coast of Tasmania. And in 2006, fishermen in the Falkland Islands caught an 8.62 meter long specimen.