Procedures work but squid grow slim and a paradox is reinforced. Off the coast of San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico. We caught our own squid (almost everyone on the boat was caught up in the frenzy of squid quest) and kept 3 or 4 (5 was our record) alive in an assortment of coolers and tanks connected to a spider web of plumbing – all connected to our trusty sump pump suspended over the side to provide fresh seawater.

We also measured the oxygen content in the water column at exactly the same place we caught squid. In one case, we caught a squid on the bottom at 300 meters (about 900 feet) and found the oxygen concentration there to be less than 10% of that at the surface – that's our working definition of the upper edge of a midwater zone of low oxygen known as the oxygen minimum layer (OML).

Although we know that squid must spend a lot of time in the OML, a place hostile to their fish predators (especially tuna), this was the first time that we had ever actually caught a squid at a known depth at exactly the same time and place where we found oxygen to be extremely low. We think that squid forage within this hypoxic zone, but we have no idea how they manage to stay active for long periods without an adequate oxygen supply. Measurements by our colleagues at University of Rhode Island (Brad Seibel’s lab) show that the oxygen-carrying protein in squid blood (hemocyanin – it's something like our blood's hemoglobin, which carries oxygen from our lungs to the rest of the body) simply does not bind oxygen at the concentrations and temperatures found in the oxygen minimum layer. So science has proven that what we see is impossible. It reminds me of the line from Moby Dick, “It is not on any map; true places never are.” -- Bill Gilly, squid researcher