Video of Colossal Squid Dissection

[dbbga]

That was totally amazing,,,,,,Thats it im not going swimming in the ocean anymore

 

[Jean]

Great questions Jean, I'd love to know too. I believe Steve said in the doco that one layer of stuff (some sort of calcium compound?) was deposited on the statolith each day. How do we know this? Anyone know of a reference to this? I'm just curious as that seems pretty frequent and also a pretty specific ratio considering we are just now getting "good" at aquaculture of these cephs. Now we can raise a group of squid and definitely know the ages of individuals and therefore relate that to the number of rings on their statoliths and from that develop some relationship. Bad sentence, but hopefully you get the meaning of it. Has some one done this exact thing and that's how we know? Just curious.

Cheers!

The deposition rate has been verified for some species of squid by either injecting a fluorescent dye or immersing the animal in it. The dye (usually Calcein or Tetracycline) is taken up into the statolith at the same rate as calcium so you get a fluorescent ring when you look at it under UV light. So if you know the date the dye was intoduced and the date the animal died then you count up the number of rings inbetween and relate them with a time period. Most often in squid it seems to be daily. In the big species (Messie et al) and some small oceanic ones the periodicity of the rings is inferred by their resemblance to verified species because of the difficulty in keeping the animals live in the lab.

Here's a couple of refs but there are HEAPS more. This is also a technique used for aging fish and shellfish such as clams!

Jackson, GD; Forsythe, JW. 2002. Statolith age validation and growth of Loligo plei (Cepahlopoda: Loliginidae) in the north-west Gulf of Mexico during spring/summer Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom [J. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U.K.]. Vol. 82, no. 4, pp. 677-678.

Dimmlich, WF; Hoedt, FE. 1998. Age and growth of the myosid squid Loliolus noctiluca in Western Port, Victoria, determined from statolith microstructure analysis. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom [J. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U.K.]. Vol. 78, no. 2, pp. 577-586.

Lipinski, M. 1986. Methods for the Validation of Squid Age from Statoliths Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom [J. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U.K.]. Vol. 66, no. 2, pp. 505-526.

Dawe, EG; O'Dor, RK; Odense, PH; Hurley, GV. 1985.Validation and application of an ageing technique for short-finned squid (Illex illecebrosus ). Journal of Northwest Atlantic fishery science [J. NORTHW. ATL. FISH. SCI.]. Vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 107-116.

Steve may have sent it off to a colleague in Tasmania,

Would that be George????

Cheers

J