Aboard the New Del Mar — A long night scouring a deep, dark ocean is proving uneventful -- until the luminous red dots begin drifting across the sonar screen.
Banter in the wheelhouse suddenly stops and grubby fingers point to the dots clustered along the bottom, as if trying to locate the enemy.
On deck, a fisherman lurches forward as his rod dips seaward. Another fisherman is jerked against the rail, then another.
"What else can it be?" says Capt. Ricky Carbajal of the vessel New Del Mar, which is pitching in a brisk wind, five miles beyond the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
It can only be the same bizarre denizen that has been turning up in large numbers throughout Southland waters: \o7Dosidicus gigas\f7, a.k.a. Humboldt, or jumbo, squid.
It is a colossal cephalopod that reaches 7 feet long, can weigh more than 100 pounds, and jets through the water at speeds up to 25 mph.
It has probing arms and tooth-lined tentacles, a raptor-like beak and an insatiable craving for flesh -- any kind of flesh, even that of humans.
It shows up briefly off California every four or five years, spurred by a warm current or some other anomaly, providing a boon for sportfishing businesses.
But amid this latest influx, to points as far north as Bodega Bay, there is a deepening concern among scientists that Humboldt squid are entrenching themselves off California, and may expand northward, eating their way through fisheries as they go. The same thing is happening in the Southern Hemisphere, where squid are being blamed for depleting the hake fishery off Chile.
The first verified capture off Alaska occurred three years ago. A year later, mass strandings made news in British Columbia, where wolves on outer island beaches were seen gnawing on rubbery squid carcasses.
Strandings and the subsequent deaths of squid, such as those along Orange County beaches in March 2005, have historically preceded infestations of local waters. In other words, these peculiar beings, which have a life span of less than two years, seem on their way to establishing residence along the length of the eastern Pacific.
"We really need to mount a research initiative soon," warns William Gilly, a professor at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station.
The reasons for the phenomenon have not been pinned down, although gradual ocean warming, pollution and over-fishing of large predators are suspected factors.
