Off the coast of San Carlos, Sonora. Although this is being posted long after our squid adventure, it is a tale worth recounting, and we'll do so....in nine parts. The cast of characters -- Bill Gilly (yours truly), Stanford U. grad student Danna Shulman, volunteer assistant Ashley Booth and Mexican collaborator Unai Markaida -- boarded the 85-foot research vessel R/V Pacific Storm. (With Gilly's trusty Toyota at the San Carlos Marina: Gilly, Danna and Ashley. Unai took the photo.)

The Storm hails from the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. The scientists on board were Bruce Mate (a TOPP whale researcher from Oregon State University), Kelly Benoit-Bird (also from OSU) and Whit Au (University of Hawaii).

We spent the week working in the same area where we had done the tagging off San Carlos, Sonora (see our previous post in the category "Humboldt squid"). The main goal was to work with Kelly and Whit to figure out a way to use sonar (acoustics) to see squid as they swim underwater. We want to be able to distinguish them from other mid-water creatures, particularly small fish and krill, which squid eat, and much larger animals like sperm whales, which eat squid. It would be very useful to use sonar to study interactions of all of these animals in real-time from a ship. It could also help us to answer the simple question: "How many squid are there?" Right now, we don’t really know. And knowing would help the fishers down here sustainably manage the squid fishery. The simplicity of the food chain in our study area – small midwater fishes and krill...to squid...to sperm whales -- promises to make the acoustic approach exceptionally powerful for this particular area.

But, to use sonar, you must have good “target strength” calibration information for individual squid. (In other words, doing this will enable us to read the squiggles on the screen and know that they're squid.) This is what we are trying to do in our experiments.

Next: the frenzy of squid quest.