Ryan Lockwood - Below

“What you got in mind, Doc?” Sturman was happy to see her flush.

“In all seriousness, Sturman, would your wife mind if you planned to spend a lot of time on your boat at night with a woman?”

He followed her gaze until he was looking down at his left hand and the thick gold band on his finger, scratched and scarred from years of wear.

“You saw my ring.”

“Well, you haven’t talked about her yet, but I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You won’t. I’m not married anymore.”

“Oh? Well, then why do you still wear the ring?”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

Val nodded. “Okay. Let’s just talk business then. This research is my life, and I’d love to use your boat if there won’t be any complications from your personal life.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Doc.”

Val offered a price, more than Sturman had expected, and he accepted.

“Then we’ve got a deal.”

For the next several minutes, they sat in silence until Mike joined them on the flying bridge.

“What are you kids talking about?”

“She’s hoping to go swimmin’ with these suckers. Right?” Sturman smiled and looked over at Val. “She’s more nuts than I am.”

“That’s a bad idea, Doctor.” Mike’s eyes were wide.

“Don’t worry, boys. I appreciate your concern, but I’ve done this a few times.”

“I’m not worried.” Sturman tipped his hat at Val. “I’ll be driving the boat.”

“Speaking of, I’ll need to make a few temporary modifications to your boat. We’ll need to rent some outdoor stage lighting, and rig it to shine down over the sides into the water. Would that be all right?”

“As long as we don’t damage her.” Sturman rubbed the dash gently. “So is this what you do down in Baja? Swim every night with big-ass squid?”

“Pretty much. I know it sounds crazy. My current research is devoted to understanding Humboldt squid communication. Think of a shoal of Humboldt squid like a huge pack of wolves… or, better yet, an ant colony. The shoal needs to communicate to survive, to coordinate their efforts as they hunt, travel, or evade predators.”

“Makes sense. I guess they can’t talk.”

“Actually, they can, in a way. But they use visual cues. For one thing, they change the colors and patterns of their skin, using cells called chromatophores, just like octopi do. But what’s the problem with using different colors to communicate when you’re a thousand feet underwater?”

Mike beat Sturman to the punch. “It’s dark… so they can’t see each other.”

“Exactly. So Humboldt squid use bioluminescent signals to talk to each other. They have these tiny organs, called photophores, inside their skin, which can be used to emit light.... Have you ever seen pictures of deepwater fish, like lanternfish, which have glowing lures built into their bodies?”

“Yeah. They use them to catch smaller fish for dinner.”

“Well, these squid have similar capabilities. But Humboldts use their photophores in a more complicated fashion, and emit rapid pulses of light in complex patterns. I’m trying to figure out what those different patterns mean.”

“How do you figure out what they’re saying?”

“Well, I haven’t yet. But I think I’m getting closer. I try to observe them in their environment and film a lot of footage underwater, and then I spend time in the lab… a lot of time… reviewing the glow patterns and the behaviors I observe during and after the light emissions.”

“Are they really that smart, Doctor?” Mike asked. “I mean, do they say anything to each other besides ‘Who’s hungry?’ and ‘Let’s eat’?”

Val said, “They say a lot more than that, but we’re not sure how extensive their communication is.”

“How do the tags come into this?” Sturman asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, how do you use these floating tags to figure that out?”

“Oh, the tags are a secondary part of my research. Even though I’m most interested in cephalopod communication, there’s so little known about Humboldt squid that it’s beneficial to track even the most general of their habits, like where they spend their time each day. That’s what the tags are for.”

“Aren’t you ever worried about the risks? You said these things get pretty big.” Mike always did this, Sturman thought—act like an enthralled child, unable to quit asking questions.

“They do get big, but no, I’m never really worried. I was worried on my first ten or so dives, a long time ago, but after hundreds of dives with these squid, I’ve only had a few scary encounters. They’re usually just curious about what I am.”

“So tell us—what was the biggest one you’ve ever seen?” Mike asked.

“Men are so obsessed with size.” Val sighed. “Certainly over a hundred pounds, maybe seven feet long.”

“Longer than Sturman is tall, but only a hundred pounds?”

“They don’t have to carry around a lot of internal fluids, like we do, and they lack a skeleton. Seawater in the mantle adds volume and gives them shape, so underwater they look a lot heavier than they really are. The biggest one I’ve actually weighed and dissected was ninety-two pounds. Like I told Sturman, though, there are reports of these squid reaching twice that size off the coast of South America.”

“That’s what I call a big squid.”

“I’d like to head down to Peru someday and find out for myself.”

“Sturman’s right. You really are crazier than him. You wear armor or something when you dive with these things? Like the chain mail used for shark diving?”

“No, I don’t, but some dive operations down in Baja have a sort of plastic armor they wear when they dive with Humboldts. Here’s the thing… these squid don’t have huge mouthfuls of teeth like sharks do, so there’s no real risk of getting a limb taken off. But I always tether myself to the boat, because the real danger with these guys is getting dragged down into very deep water if they grab hold of you. That can happen fast if they get overexcited.”

Sturman said, “So is that what you’re going to do here over the next few weeks? Study how they talk to one another?”

“Not exactly. I may look at that, too, since my research is centered on that. But I’m really just interested in their basic biology here—what they’re eating, where they’re spending their time, how healthy they are. That sort of thing. Coastal California was never really their habitat until the last decade or so. Even then, usually only for brief periods, which have often ended with the shoals dying and washing up on shore.”

“I’ve read a few articles about dying squid washing up on the beach here,” Mike said. “And also up in Monterey, and even as far north as Washington state. Never seen one myself, though.”

“They’re definitely expanding their range. Up in Monterey, we’ve actually been keeping a video log of the deepwater inhabitants of Monterey Canyon for decades. Our video footage has shown that Humboldts have now become permanent residents off the coast there.”

“So how are we gonna find these guys?”

“What do you mean ‘we’? For some reason you keep using that word.” Sturman looked at Mike from under his cowboy hat.

“I could maybe come along—couldn’t I? I could help you out, buddy. I know my way around a boat.”

“Your wife will never let you. You know that.”

“She’s not my boss.”

Val said, “I’ve got to be honest with you guys. It’s going to be a little like a needle in a haystack, and we may spend weeks just looking for them. It can be pretty dull.

“There are probably a few other tags in the shoal, but like I was saying, they don’t actually transmit. So we can’t simply track them. The good news is that if we find any squid at all, it’s very likely our group. There aren’t a lot of different shoals up here, like there are down by La Paz. I thought we could start by doing what we do in Mexico. We’ll start this weekend, if that’s all right, by heading to likely locations, near the continental shelf off the coast where there’s deeper water. We’ll try to lure them to us with bright lights and glowing fishing lures.”