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Nightmarish packs of rapacious giant devil squid are hunting off the British Columbia, Canada coast — and as their numbers increase, scientists are worrying about an attack on fish stocks.

Humboldt squid, called diablos rojos or red devils in Mexico, have been known to attack scuba divers and were once a rarity in B.C. waters. But a changing ocean environment has brought them northward, and they may now be permanently establishing themselves off the B.C. coast.

Along the squid’s tentacles are some 2,000 suction cups, each circled with dozens of teeth, to drag food to the razor-sharp beak with which it eats.

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Voracious jumbo squid that can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh more than 110 pounds are invading central California waters and preying on local anchovy, hake and other commercial fish populations.

An aggressive predator, the Humboldt squid can change its eating habits to consume the food supply favored by tuna and sharks, its closest competitors. The jumbo squid used to be found only in the Pacific Ocean’s warmest stretches near the equator. In the last 16 years, it has expanded its territory throughout California waters, and squid have even been found in the icy waters off Alaska.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute senior scientist Bruce Robison, first spotted the jumbo squid here in 1997, when one swam past the lens of a camera mounted on a submersible thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface. More were observed through 1999, but the squid weren’t seen again locally until the fall of 2002. Since their return, scientists have noted a corresponding drop in the population of Pacific hake, a whitefish the squid feeds on that is often used in fish sticks.

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What swims at 20 miles per hour, can carve out hunks of human flesh, and will attack anything that moves? The Humboldt squid.

Cassell first heard about the “diablos rojos,” or red devils, in 1995, from some Mexican fishermen as he was filming gray whales for German public television in Baja’s Laguna San Ignacio. Intrigued, he made his way to La Paz, near the southern tip of Baja, to dive under the squid-fishing fleet.

It was baptism by tentacle. Humboldts—mostly five-footers—swarmed around him. As Cassell tells it, one attacked his camera, which smashed into his face, while another wrapped itself around his head and yanked hard on his right arm, dislocating his shoulder. A third bit into his chest, and as he tried to protect himself he was gang-dragged so quickly from 30 to 70 feet that he didn’t have time to equalize properly, and his right eardrum ruptured.

“I was in the water five minutes and I already had my first injury,” Cassell recalls, shaking his head. “It was like being in a barroom brawl.” Somehow he managed to push the squid-pile off and make his way to the surface, battered and exhilarated. “I was in love with the animal,” he says.

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Beside the rectum is the ink sac, which allows a squid to discharge a black ink into the mantle cavity at short notice.

A colossal squid weighing nearly half a ton and believed to be the biggest ever caught is being kept on ice as scientists ponder whether to put it into a massive microwave oven. The squid, caught by New Zealand fishermen in Antarctica last month has been measured at the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington at 495 kilograms (1,090 pounds) and 10 metres (33 feet) in length.

Scientists say the frozen squid is so large, by the time the centre of the aquatic giant is defrosted the outer flesh could have rotted. So they are considering using a massive one ton microwave oven to speed up defrosting, said Steve O’Shea, a squid expert at Auckland University of Technology. “A microwave of this sort of size does exist,” he told Radio New Zealand on Thursday.

No final decision has been made on how to defrost the colossal squid, which has eyes as big as a dinner plate. If anyone made squid rings from the beast, they would be as big as tractor tires. But there are no plans to eat the beast, partly because the flesh contains so much ammonia it would taste like floor cleaner. More importantly, the squid will be preserved because it is believed to be by far the biggest ever caught. The previous largest colossal squid–mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni–was believed to have been 300 kilograms.

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