[News]: Very Large Colossal Squid Caught

[Steve O'Shea]

Many Thanks Steve.

Perhaps next time you could suggest on national media that suggestions on how to fry calamari would be welcome (and give them YOUR email address).

I think it's great that the public have got behind this; nothing like engaging them in a puzzle. I had a discussion with an engineer yesterday regarding induction heating - similar to what Cairnos has proposed. He thinks the squid could be entirely defrosted in a matter of minutes to a few hours; hopefully it wouldn't cook in the process. We really need a couple of sacrificial Architeuthis to trial the technique on first. Now how do we go about doing this? Cairnos, can you help?

b.t.w. the freezer floor partially collapsed - but I think that was more to do with the shoddy construction method than the 490kg weight.

Sounds like an insurance scam to me Don't forget to pay your power bill, whatever you do. I'd hate to have that thing defrost.

 

[myopsida]

.We really need a couple of sacrificial Architeuthis to trial the technique on first. Now how do we go about doing this? .

It's not rocket science - there's a perfectly usable solution to the problem of getting rid of the ice while keeping it at -4 Celcius. Think about it.

 

[Steve O'Shea]

The incremental increase in temp option? My only concern with that was all of the other stuff that you had in the freezers there ....

 

[Jean]

keep it away from air conditioning vents while you're defrosting, eh Steve?

 

[Cairnos]

It's not rocket science - there's a perfectly usable solution to the problem of getting rid of the ice while keeping it at -4 Celcius. Think about it.

Well if you insist on doing it the boring way..... some people have no sense of adventure. This could have been the perfect opportunity to develop entire new realms of frozen giant squid rapid defrosting technologies

Any chance of filling us in on any other interesting suggestions recieved?

 

[pipsquek]

From a chef's point of view: Thawing that thing out doesn't seem like a big deal to me, if you have a refrigerator large enough. I used to thaw frozen 30 lb turkeys in five gallon buckets of brine in my walk in refirgerator over night. Granted, a turkey is nearly hollow by the time I got it, but it did thaw rather easily. My walk in was generally about
36F, so it thawed pretty evenly, and the brine made it pretty tasty.

For the squid, I would fill a tank with heavily salted water and put a few pumps in there with it to keep the water moving around. I would get one of them jetting at the siphon and gill openings, so that I could stick a tube in there once it thawed a little to get water moving on the inside. Might take three or four days, but at 36F it is not going to decompose in that time.

 

[Jean]

Problem is that squid tissue decays VERY fast! I've had them start to decay overnight in the fridge Taught me never to take out more than I could dissect in a day! I was very unpopular in the lab for a bit, the aroma was unique! The only thing worse was the boiling of the sea lion heads they were fishery bycatch and the teeth had to be got at for aging! But oooohhhhh the pong!

J.

 

[Cairnos]

Just had a thought. Having looked at a lot of the comments people sent in to responses to news articles about this squid, there were a large number who were shocked and appalled at the way the fishermen gleefully cackled as they sadisticly tortured the poor creature to death over a period of two hours with hooks, knives, rubber hoses and boyband music (Ok, I may be exagerating just the tiniest bit, but seriously in some cases not by much).

This leads me to ask: Just how would you go about humanely (for the purposes of this question I assume that would mean rapidly) killing a giant or colossal squid without causing to much damage to it's value as a specimen? Assume that the beasty is injured, dying, tangled etc. so that is is either motionless or almost so.

As I understand it a strike to the brain would be almost impossible (would it even be effectual?)

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Perhaps an injection of copper sulphate might do the trick, although I don't know how long it would take for this to take effect. Otherwise, for this cold-water animal, a warm bath would do the trick pretty smartly.

 

[CapnNemo]

Hello Doctor, I understand you're nuking the kraken as laid out on the beeb

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Microwave plan for colossal squid

note how they've also adjusted the size on the diagram

 

[myopsida]

Perhaps an injection of copper sulphate might do the trick, although I don't know how long it would take for this to take effect. Otherwise, for this cold-water animal, a warm bath would do the trick pretty smartly.

When faced with a problem, ignore the scientists and ask somebody who knows - in this case a chef.
Brine solutions depress the freezing point of water, so a -4C solution will get rid of the ice. Thanks Psqk.

Copper sulphate is good for getting rid of fungi on tomato plants

 

[Jean]

We use magnesium chloride as an anaesthetic in other molluscs, so perhaps a massive shot of this?

J

 

[WhiteKiboko]

if you put it in an environment where you could raise the atmospheric pressure, (for the sake of argument, say a decompression chamber) would the specimen be harmed by the higher psi that would make the ice melt at a lower temp?

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Copper sulphate is good for getting rid of fungi on tomato plants

And didymo .... and everything else I hear

 

[myopsida]

nothing like a biological desert to promote that 'clean green' image...