15-05-2004, 11:58 PM
Being interested in squid I decided to try something completely stupid and absurd. I used a small leader spool and tied a small squid jig to it and towed it behind me when snorkelling. Guess what? It worked!
I located a school of small squid off my local rocks and one of them attacked the jig. I retreived really fast and got the squid and held it just behind the head. However to my displeasure I discovered that squid are very flexible creatures and this one swung its tentacles around and started sucking on my bare hand. This was still underwater. I got paranoid that its beak was gonna make it to chump my flesh and I had to let go of it, and the barbs promptly fell out, and the squid escaped. I was surprised to see that the barbs did substantial damage to its tentacles, which was obviously frayed from my viewpoint underwater.
My more sensible attempts underwater so far have yielded about 10 squid, all on my handspear. One thing I have noticed which impressed me was that when followed matchbox sized squid around, they changed color as they moved from a sandy bottom to rock bottom. But the thing was that they timed it perfectly, such that the moment they made the transition accross the border between rock and sand they switched perfectly. Whats even more amazing is that they did it such that the transition was perfect if viewed FROM MY PERSPECTIVE. So they took into account that I was a threat to them, and adjusted their color changing according to the way they looked from my perspective. I found that unbelievable. :blink:
I located a school of small squid off my local rocks and one of them attacked the jig. I retreived really fast and got the squid and held it just behind the head. However to my displeasure I discovered that squid are very flexible creatures and this one swung its tentacles around and started sucking on my bare hand. This was still underwater. I got paranoid that its beak was gonna make it to chump my flesh and I had to let go of it, and the barbs promptly fell out, and the squid escaped. I was surprised to see that the barbs did substantial damage to its tentacles, which was obviously frayed from my viewpoint underwater.
My more sensible attempts underwater so far have yielded about 10 squid, all on my handspear. One thing I have noticed which impressed me was that when followed matchbox sized squid around, they changed color as they moved from a sandy bottom to rock bottom. But the thing was that they timed it perfectly, such that the moment they made the transition accross the border between rock and sand they switched perfectly. Whats even more amazing is that they did it such that the transition was perfect if viewed FROM MY PERSPECTIVE. So they took into account that I was a threat to them, and adjusted their color changing according to the way they looked from my perspective. I found that unbelievable. :blink: