Dazed Giant Squid Wash Up On La Jolla Shores

Thanks, Jim J!

_____





It was an odd start to the morning in La Jolla. First residents were jolted out of bed at 7.34 a.m. by a 4.0 magnitude earthquake that was centered 19 miles out to sea.

Residents were jolted out of bed by an earthquake, which is not uncommon in San Diego, but what happened just minutes later was a little fishy.

“I was having coffee up on the balcony and I felt it shaking,” Kate Lutkemeier said.

“I heard my doors and windows rattling, thinking that somebody was trying to get in my front door actually,” La Jolla resident Mary Skeen said.

“We just got here about 15 minutes ago and Lilly, what did you see on the beach?” John Feher asked his little daughter. “Squid, squid, squid, squid, squid.” she replied.

Dozens of dazed Humboldt squid that were about three to four feet long and weighed close to 40 pounds were flapping around on La Jolla Shores beach.

“It’s like their equilibrium is all messed up and they don’t know what they’re doing and they can’t back out there,” Bill Baumann said. “It was like they got -- I don’t know -- all shook up.”

It didn’t take long for the seagulls to swoop in and start feeding on the squid, so beachgoers ran to the rescue and tried frantically to save them by throwing them back in the water. That proved to be a difficult task for several reasons -- they were extremely heavy, very slippery, and when the good Samaritans did manage to get them back them in water, the squid didn’t know where to go and kept washing back up.

“Some people were saying it was the earthquake this morning that caused them to get disoriented but who knows? Feher said.

“Why are they here? Why are the squid here? I can’t honestly tell you,” Sgt. Rains said. “I don’t if it’s tied or not to the earthquake.”

“The Humboldt squid can be very big and very powerful and they may be dangerous,” Sgt. Rains said. “It’s just something I wouldn’t mess with until you’re sure that it’s dead. They’ve got a lot of suckers and claws and a parrot like beak and they can inflict some damage.”

A spokesman for Scripps Institution of Oceanography said at this point they do not see a connection between the squid and the earthquake, but plan to look into it. Dozens of squid washing up at the same time is unusual but it has happened before, according to Sgt. Rains. But Mary Skeen said it is a first for her.

“I have never seen squid in the 42 years that I’ve lived here on the shores in La Jolla,” she said.