Massive gathering of 1,000 squid confronts deep sea team working off Florida Keys

Deep-sea explorers working off the Florida Keys encountered a surreal scene days ago, when their remotely controlled camera was engulfed by a school of squid that experts say may have numbered a thousand or more.

Images posted on Facebook show the fluorescent creatures filled the ocean as far as the lens could penetrate.

NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research says they encountered the school 32 miles south of the Florida Keys, in an area known as the Pourtalès Terrace. The camera reached depths of 1,138 to 1,325 feet, NOAA told the McClatchy news group.

Michael Vecchione of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s National Systematics Laboratory watched the scene live and he says it was “cool” to see the squids so “densely packed.” He told McClatchy the school was made up of “hundreds, maybe a thousand or more” squid.

“It’s not rare to see a school of shortfin squid, but unusual to see one this large,” Vecchione told McClatchy. “Squids school for the same reasons that fishes do. Safety and mating are very likely.”

Shortfin squid typically grow to only about a foot and have a lifespan of less than a year, NOAA says. They migrate to the waters off Florida in late fall and early winter to mate and spawn, Vecchione said.

However, he doesn’t believe they were mating in this instance. He reached that conclusion based on a 2017 NOAA expedition that found evidence these “squids mate, spawn once, and then die.”

“I didn’t see any dead squid or other evidence of mating/spawning, but I suspect that they were starting to think about it,” he told McClatchy.

The school of squid was seen last weekend during Dive 10 of the 2019 Southeastern U.S. Deep-Sea Exploration, which employed a remotely operated vehicle to explore “unknown and poorly understood deepwater areas of the U.S. Southeast.”

“Most dives have highlights. This one had many,” NOAA said of Dive 10.

Along with the school of squid, the team recorded a “humongous” sunfish that was estimated to be 6.5 feet long, NOAA said. Sunfish can reach a 2,200 pounds, NOAA reports.

“They’re the craziest fish I’ve ever seen. They are so weird. It’s just looks like a head with fins,” NOAA researchers say in the video.

This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 2:24 PM with the headline "Massive gathering of 1,000 squid confronts deep sea team working off Florida Keys."