Scripps to the Rescue

Published: Friday, May 25, 2007 11:54 AM PDT

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voiceofsandiego.org Executive Editor Andrew Donohue was walking on the scenic shores of Ocean Beach recently when he stumbled across these:

He gave this reporter an unusual assignment. Identify the dead beasts and figure out why they landed ashore.

Donohue was worried that the four dead squid found in the small cove could've been a warning sign of mass squid deaths that occurred in Newport Beach and in La Jolla.

I'm no squid expert. So I turned to the folks at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego.

Mario Aguilera, a Scripps spokesman, spoke to Greg Rouse, a Scripps professor who has published research on such things as "bone-eating marine worms with dwarf males."

Aguilera reported back that Andrew's dead squid looks like a Humboldt squid, which only live for a year or so.

"It could have been a natural death," Aguilera wrote in an e-mail, cautioning that a definitive verdict couldn't be rendered without physically inspecting the squid.

-- ROB DAVIS