It Came From the Deep!!

Hello Everyone!

Usually I try not to base this blog on current events, but the recent sitings and beachings of Jumbo or Humboldt Squid on California's Southern Coast has created a stir worthy of comments.

The first thing I'd like to point out is the common choice of words used in the press, describing it as an "invasion" of squid. Very revealing choice of words don't you think?

At one level it makes it sound like D-Day. Like the squid are invading "our" territory. And sure many of those squid are dying on the beaches and getting eaten by birds. But it seems to reflect a mindset that any animal we aren't used to seeing is an "invader" rather than creatures we share the earth with and don't fully understand. At another level the idea of non-human creatures "invading" can carry the connotations of aliens from another planet. In the celluloid of the 1950's a scary invader could just as easily come from "the deep", "from outer space", or have been cooked up by "The Russians" (only in those days it was really the USSR.). Perhaps this was a tacit admission about how little we really know about the oceans of this planet.

One theme in events like these is human paranoia. When it comes to sea creatures-or even terrestrial wildlife-it doesn't take much to create a disproportionate fear. One fateful but little remembered event in the history of human-sea life relations comes to my mind when I hear the media talk about the jumbo squid. An event that would both change how Western culture views sharks completely in just one summer.

Throughout the 18th and 19th century, most sharks weren't viewed as particularly threatening. While sailors tales of giant sea monsters, ancient Nordic/Celtic beasts such as the Kraken or Coinchen and Biblical ones such as the Leviathan, and yes giant squids (which then and now have been found washed on beaches) terrified seafarers from assorted peasants in steerage to veteran captains, and calloused slave traders, and sharks didn't really stand out. At the time even whales far from their current status as admired for their intelligence and regarded as symbols of the ecology movement, were often misunderstood and regarded as viscous and violent beasts. A point well illustrated by novels like Moby Dick and the Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale. (Even in the 1940's cartoon such as Pinocchio retained this imagery.) While many of these sea monsters are easily laughed off by modern people the view of sharks was rather closer to the truth than modern perceptions. Indeed if I was in a pre-industrial sea vessel, I would be less alarmed by sharks than a large whale!!

But in the summer of 1916, all that was about to change. As The Great War (aka WWI) raged in Europe prior to US entry, as Turkey waged genocide against Armenia, as TE Lawrence worked in an office in Cairo hoping to see real action, just months after Ireland had seen it's last failed revolt against the British Empire, and less than a year before the last Tsar of Russia would be overthrown and killed along with his family, an immense amount of press in the United States would focus on a series of incidents on the New Jersey coast, that killed only four people.

Between July 1 and 12 five people would be attacked by sharks in New Jersey and only one of them would survive. As people took to swimming on the beaches in the summer sharks and humans would collide. Perhaps even more curiously, two of the fatal attacks occured not on the beach, but in Matawan Creek 16 miles inland. One interesting thing about those deaths from a modern point of view is that two of those people didn't die in the water, but on land. One man bled to death on the manager's desk of a hotel and another in a hospital, which is to say that with modern medicine and ambulance services they most likely would have survived.

At the time many, ichthyologists, marine biologists, and other members of the scientific community reacted with great skepticism that sharks would attack and kill a human being in temperate waters, and to this day point out accurately that the actual risk of shark attacks are quite small.

The general public however, needed much less convincing as "shark hysteria" went into full swing, and boated posses were launched to haunt and kill sharks. A year later after the US had entered WWI however briefly before it ended the shark incidents of the previous summer would look pretty puny by comparison. Yet a sea change (no pun intended) in the perception of sharks had been fully accomplished. And nearly 50 years later, a well known cult classic inspired by the events, would launch Stephen Spielberg's career. By that point the actual incidents were not widely remembered by the public, but the change in conscienceness was entirely taken for granted. However, in recent years even the Great White Shark has been granted a novel look by scientists.

To this day nobody knows why exactly this rash of shark attacks on humans happened in one place. Some claim that it was simply a stastical fluke-something anyone who has studied statistics has to admit is a reasonable possibility. Others couldn't help but speculate that it was related to the Naval Wafare raging in the Atlantic Ocean. Some people wondered if all the bodies dumped into the ocean or lost sailors who were never found, might have given the sharks a taste for human flesh. However, to my mind this view seems historically blind. After all, uncounted millions of men, women, and children were dumped dead or alive from the slavegoing ships of the Middle Passage alone, during the period when sharks were widely regarded as harmless. Perhaps this was because people didn't swim on the beaches as much, or because society lacked the media to widely publish shark attacks. Or perhaps as other suggested the sharks headed to the Western shores of the Atlantic to get away from the noise generated by Naval Battles. However, I've yet to see any convincing evidence of other naval warfare causing similar "outbreaks" of shark attacks.

The real truth is that we don't know what the cause was in 1916, and we don't really know what is causing the beaching of jumbo squid on the coast of California now. Some scientists say it's a turnover of the ocean currents, others point to earthquake. In this day and age, speculation about climate change is inevitable. Some biologists wonder if the squid aren't establishing a new population in the area, and that they come to the surface looking for food. Certainly not every shifting in ocean populations (or terrestrial animals, or plants) is the result of global warming, as any ecologist could tell you.

While some people will misuse any explanation other than climate change for the squid as an excuse to mock the whole issues, the truth remains that we know so little about the ocean. We know very little about how climate change and hundreds of other factors affect it. We know very little about so many of its inhabitants.

But one can hope that these squid beachings will inspire people not to fear ocean going squid, but to regard sea life with a certain amount of respect-even when it does warrant caution.

Say Goodnight Readers!