Squid man Bill Gilly's in the news. (That's him and a small jumbo in an L.A. Cicero photo.) He and Randall Davis at Texas A&M in Galveston tagged jumbo (Humboldt) squid and their predators, sperm whales, in the Sea of Cortez in 2004. It was the first time that prey and predator were tagged at the same time. Not much is known about how these animals spend their time or how they hunt.

The short version: They tagged five whales and three of those ginormous squid that can grow to be six feet long! The whales lurked between 600 to 1,300 feet, day and night. The squid hung out at those depths during the day, and then, at night, went above 600 feet, probably following their own prey. But after going closer to the surface, and into warmer waters, they dive rapidly back down to the cooler waters.

The news trail: Davis and Gilly published their results in yesterday's Marine Ecology Progress Series. Mark Shwartz, science writer and video producer at Stanford News Service wrote a story (Tracking sperm whales and jumbo shrimp). Which resulted in at least two stories:

Jumbo Shrimp, Sperm Whale Study Reveals How the Giant Creatures Feed, Hunt in National Geographic News Service

Deep Mystery: How Huge Whales Hunt Jumbo Squid on LiveScience.com, which was picked up by Foxnews.com...only the headline changed:
Beers, Tacos Lead to Marine Biology Breakthrough

You can check out video of the jumbo squid in action on a how-he-does-it story on the TOPP site: Squid Tagging in Baja California