Jumbo squid invade shores, spook divers

SAN DIEGO - Jumbo flying squid - aggressive 5-foot-long sea monsters with razor-sharp beaks and toothy tentacles - have invaded the shallow waters off San Diego, spooking scuba divers and washing up dead on tourist-packed beaches.

The carnivorous calamari, which can grow up to 100 pounds, came up from the depths last week and swarms of them roughed up unsuspecting divers. Some divers report tentacles enveloping their masks and yanking at their cameras and gear.

The so-called Humboldt squid are native to the deep waters off Mexico, where they have been known to attack humans and are nicknamed "red devils" for their rust-red coloring and mean streak. Those who dive with them there chum the water with bait and sometimes get in a metal cage or wear chain mail to avoid being lashed by tentacles.

The squid hunt in schools of up to 1,200, can swim up to 15 mph and can skim over the water to escape predators.

The squid are too deep to bother swimmers and surfers, but many longtime divers say they are staying out of the surf until the sea creatures clear out.

Roger Uzun, a veteran scuba diver and amateur underwater videographer, swam with a swarm of the creatures for about 20 minutes and said they appeared more curious than aggressive. The animals taste with their tentacles, he said, and seemed to be touching him and his wet suit to determine if he was edible.

"As soon as we went underwater and turned on the video lights, there they were. They would ram into you, they kept hitting the back of my head," said Uzun, who later posted a 3-minute video with his underwater footage on YouTube.

Scientists aren't sure why the squid, which generally live in deep, tropical waters off Mexico and Central America, are showing up off the Southern California coast - but they are concerned.

Research suggests the squid may have established a year-round population off California at depths of 300 to 650 feet, said Nigella Hillgarth, executive director of the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Divers this summer have been encountering them at about 60 to 80 feet down, they said.

No one knows how many squid are in the shallow waters, but one biologist estimated they could number in the hundreds, or possibly thousands.

"Usually where there's one squid, there's a lot of squid, so I would assume that there's a good number," said John Hyde, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in San Diego.