Northwest Dive Club

Hi
Jesse found a nest of stubby eggs the other day in the hood canal that was so close to hatching you could see the squid inside the eggs. Very cool.

Questions:
1) Does anyone know if all the nests tend to hatch this time of year?
2) Have there been any other recent nest sightings? Preferably redondo or 3 tree, but anywhere between Tacoma and Mukilteo?

In past years there's often been a nest in the rock pile near the I-beams at cove 2 on the underside of the rocks, but I haven't been there in a while. Has anyone seen it?

We'd all like to see some hatch!

There are usually egg masses at Redondo and three tree but I haven't heard any reports so far. There should be some around they were schooling last month.

From california squid info.
How soon the young market squid will emerge from the egg capsules depends on water temperature. In California waters they have been known to hatch in 12-23 days, while mid-March deposits in some of British Columbia's chillier waters have taken 90 days to hatch. In Puget Sound, it takes about 70 days for the eggs to hatch.

Hi Rich

Thanks for the info! Just to be clear, I'm looking for stubbies not market squid, though I'd imagine they'd be similar, and both would be cool huh?

Do stubbies school to lay eggs? Watching them lay the nest would be quite the sight!

Here's a pic of a stubby nest (with the top-left egg showing a little stubby inside).

Greetings,

Here's a link to a paper by Roland Anderson (Seattle Aquarium) on Stubby Squid:

http://dspace.rubicon-foundation.org/xm ... sequence=1

and the Cephalopod Page description of the species (also by R. Anderson):

http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/Rpacifica.php

A couple of crib notes from these sources:

1. Rossia pacifica (aka Stubby Squid) isn't a true squid and has more in common with octopuses and cuttlefish - so don't expect 'squidlike' spawning behavior.
2. Spawning and egg hatching both seem to be temperature sensitive so timing could be fairly consistent at a given site but quite variable from from one site to another.

There's another paper out there somewhere entitled Field observations of Rossia pacifica (Berry, 1911) egg masses (by R. Anderson & R.L. Shimek) that might be right on point for your questions but my search ability wasn't up to the task of finding the actual paper.

Reproductively yours,
Alex

Thank you so much for the info! Very interesting!

Yes, good articles.