NEW ZEALAND GIANT SQUID.

TONY LUCAS WRITES: This arrived today. Why the hell don't I live in Wellington Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

EMAIL TO MARINE BIOLOGY INTERNATIONAL: Wellington, NZ - Te Papa educator Emma Best and interested children check out the massive squid which was washed up on the Wellington coastline. A spokesman from Te Papa said it was thought the squid had been attacked before washing up on the beach.

The squid is estimated to be about 4m long. Onlookers examine the remains of the squid. Crowds surround the squid at Houghton Bay.

Department of Conservation staff have removed the creature's beak so experts can use it to determine the age of the squid. The massive squid was found by residents at Houghton Bay on Wellington's south coast and experts from Te Papa have estimated it could be up to 4m long. The remains have now been washed out to sea.

Te Papa communications manager Jane Kieg said the creature was in bad shape as it had been attacked and had suffered further damage from being washed up on the beach.

Department of Conservation Wellington area manager Rob Stone initially identified the squid as a colossal squid - the largest type. But Ms Kieg said it was a giant squid. She said colossal squid have short tentacles with swivel hooks and massive fins. But the Wellington beast has long tentacles with teethed suckers and small fins.

Giant squid can grow up to 13 metres in length. Department of Conservation staff had removed the creature's beak and experts at Te Papa would measure it in order to determine the age of the creature.

Ms Kieg said it was however a "fantastic" opportunity to see a giant squid. Te Papa had one of its educators at the beach, explaining the giant squid to people. Because the area is a marine reserve, the remains were left on the beach but were washed backed out to sea about 3pm. Victoria University marine biology student and Island Bay resident Jeannine Fischer said she was in a laboratory this morning when she heard about the squid having washed up on the beach, so went down for a look.

''As far as I know it is very rare. I've never heard of such a big squid washing up so close to Wellington.''

Ms Fischer said the squid, which was white, with pink and white tentacles, was sitting in a stormwater channel.

WANDERING ABOUT ON THE NATURE BLOG NETWORK

Last night I was quite unwell, and so I lay in bed, drinking brandy and coke, cuddling Spider the cat, and pootling about aimlessly on the internet. As regular readers will know we joined the Nature Blogs Network a few days ago, and I soent a happy couple of hours browsing some of our fellow blogs.

I found several of cryptozoological interest, so, just as a taster, here are just a couple of crypto-related bloggybits I found..

Ivory-bills Live!

By April 30 of this year it will be 4 years since Cornell made their incredible announcement beginning this long, bumpy, winding journey. Essentially, there are about 4 months left to move the Ivory-bill agenda forward. If nothing is found in these 4 months more substantial than what is already on record in support of Ivory-bill persistence, then official searching, funding, and most interest will die a solemn death (independent searchers will carry on their efforts as money and time allows). More individual sightings, blurry video, and auditory recordings won't do (so proclaimeth from on-high the skeptically-inclined). An indisputable photo or carcass are needed .....

Lord Geekington on architeuthis

I was under the impression that just about every (non-Nautilus) cephalopod has a life history which involves growing at a blazing speed, reproducing, and then dying in about a year or two. The implications of such an ephemeral lifestyle on the growth of giant cephalopods is staggering, although it is possible that giants have a considerably longer lifespan than the norm.

OLL LEWIS: The Nature Of Sea Monk Was Irrepressible.

This guest bloggy thing seems to have taken a hold on people's imagination all across the CFZiverse. What started off as a mildly interesting idea seems to have taken off big-time, and looks as if it is going to get bigger still.

Now, for the third time, its the turn of Oll Lewis, the CFZ ecologist (who also happens to be the bloke living in my spare room) is following up his previous blog which suggested that everything we knew about Krakens might be wrong...

After my blog ‘Kraken the code’ the other day I received several emails asking me for more information about giant squid, which I only covered briefly towards the end of the article.

Although scientists find out more about these most enigmatic of animals every year, there are still hundreds of unanswered questions about their ecology and biology. One of these questions is that of taxonomy. Due to the small number of properly preserved, and complete, specimens of giant squid many scientists disagree about the exact number of species of giant squid (squid of the genus Architeuthis). Some have contested that there are more than 20 different species, whereas others claim 8 species exist, 3 species exist or even point out that there is no evidence at all that the specimens are not all Architeuthis dux.

The bodies of giant squid have turned up on coasts and beaches all over the world and are thought to grow up to a length of 13 meters for females and 10 meters for males. There have, however, been reports of much larger giant squid, but sadly these invariably turn out to have been misreported. One giant squid was found washed up alive on the charmingly named Thimble Tickle Bay, Newfoundland, Canada in 1878. The Thimble Tickle Bay squid has often been reported as measuring 18 meters (55 ft) from the tip of its mantle to the end of its two feeding tentacles. It all sounds very impressive until you check the original reports: the total length of the squid was listed as 35 ft and NOT 55 ft meaning it would have measured only 10 meters, which would be within normal size limits. I suspect the size exaggeration came from somebody incorrectly reading a 3 as a 5. Like many giant squid specimens, the Thimble Tickle Bay specimen was not preserved for science, and the eventual fate of the squid was to end up as food for the local dogs.

In my previous blog I lamented the fact that the giant squid has often been incorrectly shoe-horned in with kraken reports. However, the giant squid does have another possible cryptozoological link. In 1546 a most peculiar creature was found floating in Danish waters. The creature became known as the sea monk in English and when the king of Denmark was informed of the strange discovery he was perturbed enough to demand the animal’s immediate burial. The creature had a head similar to, or at least evocative of, a shaven-headed monk, a scaled body that looked similar to a monk’s habit and the lower half of the body terminated in a fish-like tail.

In the 19th Century, Japetus Steenstrup, the Danish biologist that first described Architeuthis dux, ventured a theory based on descriptions and illustrations made close to the time of the discovery of the sea monk, that it may have been a giant squid. Most of Steenstrup’s evidence was incredibly circumstantial and there are a number of things in the description of the sea monk that just don’t tally with it being a giant squid. Giant squid do not have scales, but Steenstrup explained away this inconvenient fact by suggesting that the scales might not have been scales at all, but blotches on the skin of the animal that was part of its natural colouration. Also that one out of several, probably secondary, accounts of the sea monk says it did not have scales. Steenstrup also redrew contemporary drawings of the sea monk to make it appear more squid-like for his comparisons. The ‘original’ drawings had probably been drawn based on the description rather than on the specimen itself because of the king’s insistence on a speedy burial in any case so they present very weak evidence that the creature was a squid in the first place, which is weakened further still by the fact they had to be redrawn. All this does not mean that the sea monk was definitely not a giant squid, but personally I think the evidence is just not there to support the hypothesis.

Like a large number of cryptids, there is evidence that something was found but, when you strip away years, or in this case centuries, of speculation the evidence you are left with is not conclusive enough to be able to say what that something was with any degree of certainty. This hasn’t stopped many scientists from suggesting their own opinions on what the creature may have been, including a hooded seal or a walrus (both suggested by Bernard Heuvelmans), an anglerfish, a Jenny Hanniver or a hitherto unknown species. Each theory has its own advantages and disadvantages (which are explored in detail by Charles Paxton and R. Holland in the paper Was Steenstrup Right? A New Interpretation of the 16th Century Sea Monk of the Øresund but no theory as yet seems to fit the description totally. Without the actual body of the sea monk it is impossible to be sure what it was.

WHALE STORIES OF CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL INTEREST

Two stories on the excellent Wildlife Extra website are of more than considerable interest to people of a cryptozoological persuasion.

The most recent comes from the west coast of Ireland where, in September, there were the first confirmed sightings of blue whales since records began.

The other story is much older, but as it is accompanied by the only pictures of four Arnoux’s beaked whales (Berardius arnuxii), observed from a helicopter during an Antarctic expedition, we decided to include it. For more details go here.

NEWS FROM THE CETACEAN NATION

THE WORLD’S SECOND LARGEST ANIMAL RUNS AGROUND IN IRELAND

A 64 foot fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) the second largest animal in the world ran aground alive near Courtmacsherry in the west of Ireland this January. The animal was in poor condition with its bones visible through its blubber. It was hope that the animal could be saved as putting such a huge creature to sleep is hard as it takes a vast amount of drugs and shooting it with high powered firearms would be the only option.

Sadly the animal died of natural causes. It was probably very weak and ill before it ran around. The creature was buried using two JCBs.

Many fin whales have been recorded off the Irish coast since September 2008. The International Whale and Dolphin Group were working closely with operators to record the whales in the area through photo-identification, where unique markings are recorded to enable them to recognize individuals. To date they have more than 60 fin whales and 10 humpback whales recorded (mostly from West Cork).

SPURNING JAPANESE

According to Greenpeace sources in Surabaya, East Java, the Japanese whaling ship Yushin Maru II, has been forced to abandon her whale-slaughtering mission and return to port in Indonesian. The Ship has a damaged propeller, rudder and navigation system. The Yushin Maru II being out of commission will significantly decrease the number of whales killed in the southern ocean this season. It is not know if this damage was due to the gallant efforts of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Meanwhile two Greenpeace activists are awaiting trial in Japan for their part in exposing a whale meat scam. Japanese whalers hunt Antarctic minke whales (Balaenoptera bonaerensis) for ‘scientific research’ (what ever the hell that means) but the whale meat is sold on illegaly for huge profints. In 2006 505 minke whales were butcherd by the Japanese fleet.

Not content with this atrocity, Japan is making a mockery of international law by re-flagging and using the refueling tanker, formerly known as the Oriental Bluebird, after it was fined by the Panamanian government for breaching international environmental law Now named the Hiyo Maru - the vessel is still operating with the whaling fleet, without a permit and despite the fact that Japan has ratified a treaty which seeks to ban the practice of reflagging to circumvent environmental law.

SINK THE BASTARDS!

In December 2008, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Steve Irwin, named after the late, lamented conservationist and crocodile expert, perused the Japanese whaling fleet across the Antarctic.

They found Japanese whalers in the Australian Economic Exclusion Zone at 64°26 South and 132° 40' East. The Steve Irwin launched a Delta boat with a crew to attack the Yushin Maru II with rotten butter bombs. The Sea Shepherd crew pursued and delivered 10 bottles of rotten butter and 15 bottles of a methyl cellulose and indelible dye mixture.

Pursuing this ship and several others the Steve Irwin prevented them from whaling. Captain Paul Watson said… “The Japanese whalers are still targeting whales in the waters of an established international whale sanctuary and thus they are still in violation of international conservation law and acting under the principles of the United Nations World Charter for Nature, we will continue to pursue, harass and intervene against their blatantly illegal lethal assaults on the whales."

The Steve Irwin has a crew of 40 international volunteers and a film crew onboard producing the series Whale Wars. Last year the Sea Shepherd crew pursued the Japanese whaling fleet from early December until mid-March. That intervention cost the whalers over $70 million in lost profits and saved almost 500 whales.

Everyone at the CFZ would like to send out our thanks and admiration to these brave people.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY NEWS: A whale of a tale

The North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis) is one of the rarest animals in the oceans.

Called the right whale because it was the ‘right whale’ to hunt on account of its slow swimming speed and great size, commertial whalers reduced it almost to extinction.

The brilliant Wildlife Extra website reoprts that a right whale was seen 5 miles south of Faial Island in the Azores by biologists from Whale Watch Azores and the University of the Azores. This is the first record of a right whale in these waters since Jack The Ripper was in the news, back in 1888!

Lisa Steiner of Whale Watch Azores and Monica Silva from the University of the Azores
Watched the whale for more than an hour. It was identified as a right whale from photographs and the callouses on its tale flukes mean it was identifiable as the individual 3270 which was last seen in the Bay of Fundy on the US/Canadian border on the 24th September 2008.

A record of the 325 known right whales is kept by the New England Aquarium.

In related news, over forty North Atlantic right whales have been seen in the Gulf of Maine, leading right whale researchers at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center to believe they have identified a wintering ground and potentially a breeding ground for this endangered species.

Picture credit: First North Atlantic right whale seen in the Azores since 1888. Lisa Steiner/whalewatchazores.com.

WOLVES OF THE RISING SUN

I suppose that it was inevitable considering that Richard and I have lived together on and off for about ten years (although not, thank goodness, in the Biblical sense) and collaborated on various crypto projects for the entire time,that he should be sneakily becoming our foremost Guest Blogger. He has always been obsessed with dogs, so it is not surprising that Derek's marvellous posting the other day on the subject of stray wolves in Illinois prompted not one, but two wolf-related bloggings.

Canis lupus hodophilax

Some of the most fascinating wolves were found in Japan. There were two sub-species of wolf in Japan, the dwarf wolf, Honshū wolf or Shamanu (Canis lupus hodophilax) and the Hokkaido wolf or Ezo wolf (Canis lupus hattai ). The former was the smallest of all wolf species at fourteen inches shoulder hight. It was also the most strinkingly marked wolf species,with grey, white and russet fur. The Shamanu occupied the islands of Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. It was eradicated by a combination of rabies (perhapse were the myth of the mad Hito-okami first arose), that first appered in the area in 1732 and the introduction of fire arms. Troughout the 19th century they were extensivly hunted and the last known individual was killed near Washikaguchi on Honshū in 1905. In Higashi-Yoshino Village in Nara prefecture a requiem for the Shamanu is carred out each year. Despite this there are sightings that sugest the dwarf wolf might still be extant.

A wolf was killed and photographed in Fukui in 1910 but the body was destroyed by fire.

In 1934 a group of farmers northwest of Hongu reported seeing five or six wolves in a pack. After World War II, sightings increased. Forester and writer Ue Toshikatsu, thinks that this makes sense as conscription and war reduced the population of rural areas and produced an increase in the numbers of wild game such as boar and deer.

In 1993, Yanai Kenji published his own story of how, whilst mountaineering with his son and his co-worker, he was startled by a “horrible howling” near Ryogami Mountain in 1964. Soon after hearing the howls, the party encountered a lone wolf. The animal watched them briefly, then fled, leaving the half-eaten carcass of a hare behind.

In March 1994, a conference on the wolf’s possible survival was held in Nara. Over eighty professional and amateur researchers attended. They presented and analyzed reports from seventy witnesses who had seen wolves or heard howls. An accompanying story in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun stated that a shrine in Tottori Prefecture, just northwest of Nara, was discovered in January 1994 to hold a surprisingly recent specimen of a dwarf wolf. This animal may have been presented to the shrine as recently as 1950.

Most sightings have come from the Kii Peninsula. This rugged, mountainous block of land projecting into the Pacific from the southeastern coast of Honshu was the last stronghold of the Shamanu.

Canis lupus hattai

In 1966, a wolf expert named Hiroshi Yagi was driving on a forest road in Saitama prefecture (well north of the Kii) when he spotted what he believed was a wolf. He stopped, and the animal let him get close while he took photographs.

In 8th July 2000 Satoshi Nishida, a high school headmaster was on a camping trip in the mountains of central Kyūshū. He encountered a strange creature and took ten shots of it with an auto focus camera. Two of the best were taken at a range of only three to four meters from the left side of the animal.

Mr Nishida showed the pictures to Dr Yoshinori Imaizumi, a former chief at the National Museum’s animal research divistion and an expert on Japanese wolves. Dr Imaizumi noted several charactaristics inherent to the dwarf wolf including the rounded tip of the tail and the reddish orange fur behind the ears and on the outside of it’s legs. He thought it was a lactating female.

Thus far none of the alledged photos of Shamanu have reached the west.
Modern expeditions have focused on the Kii Peninsula but despite trapping efforts and playing recordings on Canadian wolf vocalizations the dwarf wolf remains elusive.

The Hokkaido wolf was closer in size to the average mainland wolf. It was found on Hokkaido, Shakhalin,the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Penninsular. It was thought to have become extinct in Japan around 1889 during the Meiji restoration period. It was deemed a threat to livestock and a bounty was placed on the species. They were erradicated mainly by poison.

Like the dwarf wolf, sightings of the Hokkaido wolf are reported from time to time. It is also thought they may survive in Kamchatka.

There can be no greater metaphore for the ‘progress’ of ‘civilization’ than the transformation of the wolf in Japan from a spiritual creature to noxious vermin as it’s culture became modenized. There is a striking similarity here to the case of the thylacine or Tasmanian marsupial wolf (Thylacinus cynocephalus). It too is offically extinct but continued reports from excellent eyewitnesses such as zoologists and park rangers sugest it still survives. If the same is true for the wolves of Japan it would be a triumph for both conservation and the Japanese nation. Let us hope that the howling gods still lurk in the fastness of the Japanese mountains.

GUEST BLOGGER OLL LEWIS: Kraken the code

Guest bloggers are coming out of the woodwork. It seems that young Max had no idea what he started with his guest blog from the other day, because the idea has taken off mightily. Links to the guest blogs are proliferating wildly with the latest being from our good friends at The Anomalist.

Now, for the second time, its the turn of Oll Lewis, the CFZ ecologist (who also happens to be the bloke living in my spare room) with an interesting concept that everything we knew about Krakens might be wrong...




There’s one fact nearly everyone knows about Kraken; it’s a giant squid.

But is it?

The Kraken, like many other cryptids, has suffered from an identity crisis similar in some ways to that of the Afanc (Welsh lake monsters that due to a mistranslation into English were thought to be beavers, never mind how absurd this made legends of afanc being pulled out of lakes by horses and chains) and the chupacabra (which no longer just describes the Puerto Rican goat sucker but is used as a catch all term for legged cryptids in the Americas whether they suck goats or not). Legends and myths about Kraken have been intertwined with misidentified whales, giant squid, turtles and Jörmungandr (the Midgard serpent).

One of the most well known descriptions of Kraken is that of Jacob Wallenberg, who described the creature in modest terms as being no larger than the width of the Swedish island of Öland. Sadly as Öland is 16 km wide this is not really the best size description he could have given for an animal particularly due to the fact that no animal could ever become that big. However, Wallenberg also described the Kraken as the ‘crab fish’ a description more evocative of a gigantic crustacean than of the gigantic cephalopods they have become synonymous with in modern day mythology.

When viewed in conjunction with other aspects of what the Krakens of legend, the earlier crab-fish description makes a lot more sense than trying to shoe-horn them in with the same description as giant squid (as fascinating as giant squid are). The bulk of Kraken tales told in the Middle Ages though to the 19th century concerned sailors or fishermen who would land on an uncharted floating island, settle down and light a fire only to witness the island sink beneath the waves. Often this would wreck their boat leaving the hapless mariners helpless and stranded. It would be very difficult to walk on a gigantic squid, no matter how large due to the consistency of the mantle.

According to legend Kraken were docile creatures and did not actively seek to destroy ships, but ships would be wrecked by the currents and whirlpools caused by their diving and surfacing. Other legends state that fish would feed on the excrement produced by a Kraken so if fishermen fished near to where one of these gigantic crab-fish was known to inhabit, provided they were careful and their boat did not get sunk by the animal, their haul would be much larger than normal.

Looking at the evidence afresh one can put together a quite plausible theory as to what Kraken may be, interestingly kraken are still with us today, and it may be possible to see one. Kraken are small rocky islands only viable at the extreme low tides caused by spring tides, which explains how such islands would have been uncharted. The illusion of sinking is caused by the tide coming in and covering the island which also causes whirlpools, currents and eddies the same way an incoming tide does on rocky beaches. The abundance of fish also supports this theory because the submerged island would provide a reef and a nursery for fish.

The Kraken of legend is most likely not a real animal, but the creatures it was lumped in with by unimaginative artists and later retellings of the tales are. Several cephalopod species, particularly squid can grow to gigantic sizes, although none approaching the legendary size of Kraken. The giant squid, Architeuthis dux, is found in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and can be as long as 13 m from the tip of the mantle to the end of its longest tentacles, and is the second largest known cephalopod (the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, of the Southern Ocean being the largest).