Unusual Squid Found on Shoreline

Observation by Nancy Yeaton:

Squid are showing up on our shorelines more and more, for several years community people have found these on the beach, this morning my brother Johnny Moonin brought this up for me to see, I told him I want to take a picture, so here it is. Our food sources are going through changes, the warm waters bring in new things to look at and go 'Hmmm, something is happening, there is no denying climate change is happening!

Comment by Mary Matthias:

This is very interesting. There have been reports about the temperature changing in the waterways. How long have squid been washing ashore there?

Comments by LEO Editors:

This observation was forwarded to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for species ID and comments on changing squid abundance.

Although we don't yet have a species identification for the squid in the photo, we would like to point out another change in squid populations in Alaska. In March of 2018, High Country News published an article on the northward movement of the market, or opalescent, squid (Doryteuthis opalescens). The recent warming trend has allowed these species to move in to areas where the waters were previously too cold. These squid have the potential to provide an alternative to other commercially harvested species such as cod. Erica Lujan

In a related observation of a squid found in Seldovia Bay, Tom Okey from Ocean Integrity Research, wrote:

"Squid (cephalopods of the order Teuthida) are a taxa that appear to be very responsive to changes in ocean conditions related to climate change and associated phenomena such as "the Blob" in the North Pacific, which was an area of the North Pacific Ocean with anomalously high temperatures and low nutrients that emerged in 2013. Given these recent oceanographic changes in the North Pacific, it is not surprising that various squid species would shift their distributions and timing quickly, given the opportunistic, highly mobile, and ephemeral life histories and strategies of these omnivorous predators. The increasing observations of novel squid species observations in the North Pacific is a generally predictable outcome of recent oceanographic changes, while the specific details of these responses are somewhat unpredictable."