What do squid eat, what eats squid? Remove the squid (fisheries) and watch the cascading effects through food chains to the good-old charismatic megafauna (sea birds, teuthophagous cetaceans, fish); just check out
Matt's article to see what could happen (decrease in squid in the diet and corresponding increase in fish and crustaceans to compensate for it), or
this (and there's another in the articles, report #
2) for long-finned pilot whales. Fish down the food chain (krill, as is occuring now) and see what the cascading effects are through food chains. Remove the fish (fisheries) and see what niche is opened up, and what the likely effects of this might be (good, old cascading effects again) - if we don't know what the squid eat we have no idea what the cascading effects might be. Global warming, expansion in the range and abundance of certain fish and/or squid species (example being Humboldt), and see what the effects of this might be on food chains! It even depends on how we
fish for squid!! My word. I realise that I am preaching to the converted, but everything is integrated.
I don't want to speak ill of your teacher at all; they might have your best interests at heart, but you could direct them here and we'd have a nice chat with them as to the importance of this work, its applied nature, and how we could best fit it into a hypothesis driven research project (most theses/research programmes these days are required to be hypothesis driven, EXCEPT ANYTHING TO DO WITH ME! I have this argument weekly with folk around here and am tired of banging my head against walls).
Give us one minute of our collective time with your teacher and I'm sure that we'd convert them! It is just as applied and conservation-oriented as any subject, and as far as I am concerned, far-more important!