We may not like it, us poor folk in the Netherlands especially, but squid apparantely thrive on global warming, overtaking humans in biomass. Not only are there more squid, according to Dr George Jackson from the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean they are also getting bigger:
“Many of the species have exponential growth, particularly during the juvenile stage so if you increase the water temperature by even a degree it has a tremendous snowballing effect of rapidly increasing their growth rate and their ultimate body size.
“They get much bigger and they can mature earlier and it just accelerates everything.”
The squid not only thrive on global warming, but also due to more direct interference by us. Since we seem intent on hunting their predators like tuna, to extinction, as well as their direct competitors, various finfish, squid can expand enormously. A good thing perhaps for them, not so good for the oceans’ ecology.
Also not good, the reports about Humboldt squid moving north into the waters around Alaska, when normally the furthest north they come is San Francisco. these squid are normally warm water animals, not suitable for living in colder waters (and indeed dying off in large numbers). The worry is, that this is happening because the warm water currents in the Pacific Ocean are shifting. And squid aren’t the only sea animals being found far north of their usual habitat: both thresher and great white sharks, as well as a hard-shell turtle and a jack mackarel have been sighted in Alaska recently…