Ryan Lockwood - Below

“You hungry, Doc? Because Bud and I are starving. There’s a fish taco place a few minutes from here.”

“Actually, I’m starving. That sounds great. Let’s get this equipment stowed first, though. This gear isn’t cheap.”

At a table outside the taco stand, as they finished eating fresh mahi-mahi tacos, Val let out a belch, making Sturman choke on his lemonade.

“Sorry. I’ve spent too much time out with sailors.”

“Best damn fish tacos anywhere, right?” The tacos were cooked perfectly, the fish charred but still very moist, the cabbage crisp, the cilantro fresh and aromatic.

“They’re not bad, but you need to remember I’ve spent a lot of time in Baja. If you’re ever down there, I’ll take you to an even better taco stand.”

“You askin’ me on a date?” Sturman looked at her with the hint of a smile on his face.

“Oh, so you do have a sense of humor.” He apparently wasn’t intimidated by her looks, like so many others. She decided to get down to work in order to change the subject. “You asked me over the phone if Humboldt squid ever attack people.”

“I did. You told me stories about squid fishermen in Mexico vanishing after falling into the water.”

“Yes, but those are only tales. Unconfirmed reports. These squid generally hunt smaller animals: anchovies, lanternfish, miniature squid. There’s not much proof that they hunt larger prey. But I was obviously intrigued by where the tag was found. Can you go over it again?”

For the next several minutes, Sturman explained the search for the missing father and daughter, the story the uncle had given, how he and another guy had found the data logger. When he was finished, Val remained quiet for a minute. Sturman leaned back in his chair and pulled his hat down lower over his eyes.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you over the phone, Will. I recently had a pretty rough experience with these animals… you might even call it an attack. So it’s certainly possible these squid would come after people. Humboldts are highly intelligent and curious. They might give human beings a try if they ran into them underwater and were hungry enough. But even if they did attack those people, they aren’t large enough to do a ton of damage or consume the corpses. The bodies would have eventually surfaced when the squid were done with them. You haven’t heard about any bodies recovered at sea, have you?”

The waitress came by the table and took their plates away. Val thanked her. Sturman waited for her to walk off before replying.

“No. Haven’t heard about any bodies. Pretty awful way to go, huh? Getting killed by a squid. They’d latch on to you with their tentacles, then dig that parrot beak into you.”

“Like I said, their physiology isn’t really designed to subdue and consume larger prey. They primarily use their arms to capture smaller animals, then to deliver the prey to their beaks. I just can’t imagine them suddenly changing their behavior to attack human beings, not to mention being able to consume them.”

“Then why are you here? Why not just have me mail you that transmitter?”

Val nodded and thought for a moment. “Like I said before, it’s possible that these were Humboldt squid attacks. These animals are large enough to overpower a person, especially since they hunt in large shoals using cooperative efforts and complex communication. It just seems highly unlikely that they’d go after someone.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“True. One thing I’ve learned as a scientist is to never rule anything out. It’s hard to say with confidence how Humboldt squid will interact with people, since they rarely ever encounter us. I’m one of the few people who have ever been in the water with them. But from my experience, they’re more curious than anything else.”

“So you’re saying these things have never really had many chances to eat us? That if they did, they just might give us a try?”

“Something like that. Imagine if you went back in time and placed human beings in front of smaller, predatory dinosaurs. Who knows what the dinosaurs would do? They might attack the unfamiliar, slightly larger animals, or their instincts might instead tell them to flee. It would all depend on how aggressive or hungry the dinosaurs were, and what past experience had taught them. These squid are like dinosaurs, in a sense. Although they aren’t removed from human interaction in a temporal sense—by a gap in time—they are removed in a spatial sense. Except for on the deck of a fishing boat, Humboldt squid and human beings never really occupy the same space.”

“There must be times when people and squid are swimming in the same place at the same time, though, right? Mexico has plenty of tourists.”

“Not many times. How many people go swimming over the very deep ocean, in the middle of the night, when Humboldt squid are active? Especially in those areas of Mexico with low populations, where these squid thrive?”

“What about those stories of missing Mexican fishermen ?” Sturman smiled. “Seems they were unfortunate enough to occupy the same space, at the same time, as some squid. And these folks who went missing here fell off their boat while fishing.”

“Those attacks on Mexican fishermen are just legends. If Humboldts have ever actually killed a fisherman, it was probably because he created a feeding frenzy of sorts as he lured them in, and then fell directly into it. The point is we don’t ever really occupy the same space as Humboldt squid on any regular basis. That said, from what we know, these squid are beginning to occupy shallower and shallower water. They also appear to be moving north, closer to large centers of human population in the United States.”

“So why are they here now? Why not fifty years ago?”

“There are a lot of theories as to why Humboldts may be showing up regularly off California. Some of my colleagues think this migration is merely cyclical, and that they’ve done this in the past when currents and water temperatures drove them north. Others, myself included, think this is unprecedented, due to the absence of predators and competition, in addition to favorable environmental conditions and acidification due to CO 2increases in the ocean.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. Let me explain. Populations of sharks, whales, and billfish that feed on or compete with Humboldt squid for food have been decimated by fishing fleets in the North Pacific over the past several decades. Combine that fact with the effects of climate change, such as changing water temperatures and deepwater current directions, and you make it possible for Humboldt squid to permanently immigrate into new habitats.”

“That makes sense.”

“Also, the natural deepwater environment of Humboldt squid has always been low in oxygen, which is one reason they rise to shallower water at night to feed and recover. There’s more oxygen in shallow water, and less carbon dioxide, which is toxic to squid in the same way it’s harmful to people. But increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide appears to be leading to higher levels of the gas in shallower waters. Besides acidifying the water and destroying the shells of marine organisms, this increase of carbon dioxide in the water will probably force Humboldt squid to spend much more time closer to the surface to absorb enough oxygen to survive.”

“So your Humboldt squid are now residents of the state of California?”

“They are. And they may be here to stay.”

Asmall wave rushed up the beach and licked the toddler’s toes with foam, then slid back down the sand into the sea as another wave churned over it. The girl, dressed in a red sun hat and matching one-piece swimsuit, giggled as the waves reached her feet.