:smack:
Heavens, guys, gals; you’re a bit rough on me aren’t you? Someone just drew this thread to my attention.
First and foremost, anyone that has dealt with the press knows that you don’t believe everything that you read! They do tend to sensationalise everything. If it doesn’t have big hooks, big teeth, huge eyes, breathes fire, cable-cutting beaks and a forked tongue then it is simply not going to get a mention.
However, there are just a couple of points that I care to clarify right here.
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1 + 1 does not equal 3 at AUT!
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The manuscript describing this *Mesonychoteuthis *specimen, and several additional specimens is now complete and about to be submitted for publication.
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Put yourself in our shoes; you receive a humungous block of ice, defrost it and blow your mind. You have before you something that is larger (see point 5) than anything you have ever encountered before, and you have processed MANY tons of fisheries bycatch and know what you are talking about. Do you: a) go golly gosh, take the beaks out and discard it because you haven’t a bottle big enough to put it in; b) measure, describe and preserve the specimen, submit for publication, wait 2 years in the process, then have a press release when the specimen is shrivelled up in formalin, stinks and looks quite disgusting; c) call the cameras in so that everyone has the opportunity to see it (see point 4), then go about the process of describing it.
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Given the extent of commercial fisheries impacts in the environment, people have a right to know what is happening and where. We deliberately prostitute and presstitute ourselves by using this charismatic megafauna to lure people into far more important issues, such as conservation. Do a google search on my name + conservation. You’ll see that I am no stranger to this game. It is not about the squid, but about the environment; people don’t give a rats ar5e about the myriad smaller-bodied so-called insignificant animals killed everytime a trawl hits the sea bed - but they do is the squid are killed, or the diet of teuthophagous cetaceans is forced to change over 30 years given the loss of primary food sources and habitat.
Finally, 5). Size is a difficult one to measure. In squid it can be in terms of total length, standard length, mantle length and weight; you have concerned yourself solely with weight.
Of 121 Architeuthis dux that I have handled personally over the past 8 years, the maximum length was 13m (~40 feet), with a weight of 275kg (I haven’t converted to pounds); this was a female with a mantle length of 2.25m, a standard length (mantle, head and arms) of 5m; the rest of her, ~2.3m of tentacle within the arm crown (included in the standard length measurement) and a free portion of 8m is made up of these two inordinately long, feeble tentacles. The male is shorter and lighter, to 10m and 150kg. Mantle and standard length are the two standards in squid descriptions.
I’ll ask you. What would you sooner be in the water with. A 13m Architeuthis (total length) weighing 275kg, or a 5m (total length) **SUBMATURE **Mesonychoteuthis weighing ~ 300kg? That weight has to be distributed somewhere, and that is in the BODY of the animal; it is stuffing enormous. It doesn’t have pathetic, feeble tentacles to stretch out like Architeuthis; this animal attains a massive size that exceeds that of *Architeuthis *in mantle and standard length.
If anyone really cares I can link you to several sites/images that give you a direct comparison, and an indication of the damage that this squid can do to a sperm whale. I’m a tad disinclined right now; we’ll see. You will find this subject discussed to death on www.TONMO.com; it’s the only site I visit regularly as I don’t have a lot of time. I’ll get to the eyes later; they are typical of the family Cranchiidae.
Me