How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 108: The Giant Cuttlefish Profile
Today, on Species Tuesday, we examine my favourite group of animals in the world, the cuttlefish. I love these guys because of these ability to hover and change colour for camouflage. I profile the giant Australian cuttle fish today along with some of its pretty cool features and some conservation aspects that we should all know about.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session108
Welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session one zero eight Welcome to species Tuesday everybody. This is a great show I love doing the show because it's profiling a species that I like or that I find dear to me or something that's in the news Yesterday we talked about seagrasses and I was going to do a whole episode launch Tuesday dedicated to seagrasses but I thought I spoke a lot about the sort of reproductive Biology of and strategies of seagrasses and went along the lines of how important they are so I don't want to repeat the show today So today we're gonna talk about one of my favorite species actually it's the my my favorite species and that's the cuttlefish You know, it's it's so we're gonna talk all about that. I'm not gonna go into details now because the pre-intro so Stay tuned and we are going to talk about the cuttlefish on this week's episode on this Tuesday's episode of the speaker for blue podcast stay tuned Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the speaker for blue podcast your voice for the ocean I'm your host Andrew luan founder speak up for blue.com marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer That's right everything I do for the ocean as an entrepreneur. I do to protect the ocean Everything I do as an entrepreneur. I'm getting messed up and all my stuff today Everything I do as an entrepreneur I do for the ocean to protect the ocean and that's why I call myself an Ocean printer bleh, I am going to get this right at one point in time people But today we're gonna talk about the cuttlefish. It's one of my favorite species And I thought you know there are a lot of different types of cuttlefish out there So I thought that we would talk about one of the largest ones called the giant cuttlefish Or also called the Australian cuttlefish or Australian giant cuttlefish many common names But the lat name is sepia a pama a pama a pama. I guess we're gonna call it Found in Australia found in the southern waters of Australia and we're gonna talk all about that today. It's You know characteristics, but we're gonna talk a little bit of you know about cuttlefish in general because more of an intro But I thought I would focus more on the giant Australian cuttlefish because it's so big and and and it's very popular So we're gonna talk a little bit about that, but before we talk about Cuttlefish, we're gonna talk I just want to thank people the thank a few people that are helping us here at the speaker for blue Podcast get our message out to the podcast community and they do that through our patreon campaign It's a crowdfunding campaign at patreon.com And that is Judy and Ron Dr. Judith Dr. Judith Weiss and Chris and Claire Jefford. Thank you very much for your contributions to our Patreon campaign we really and you know, we really value your support and We enjoy you know, I have a small team here with Nathan myself and Kate We enjoy putting this stuff together and we've made a lot of contacts We've gotten on our message across to a lot of people and we just want to make people aware about what's happening in the ocean And we get to do that through this crowdfunding campaign If you want to contribute to this count crowdfunding campaign You can do so at speaking for blue dot com forward slash patreon P A T Our EON so we really appreciate if you can support. It's a monthly support So just remember that if you're putting the the amount in the box But it's all safe. It's all secure patreon is a great site very similar to kickstarter Except it does a monthly contribution for people who are continuing who are constantly putting out Content like we are so thank you very much for your support if you've already supported if you're about to support We really appreciate it. If you have any questions, you can always contact me You know how to do that through speak up from blue dot com forward slash contact. So thank you very much. Here we go with the episode We're gonna talk about the giant Australian cuttlefish, but before we do I wanted to start off with a story It's actually very similar to the story yesterday because it happened in the same place So yesterday I talked about seagrasses and I talked about being in this lagoon on a trip with my wife and some friends in Jamaica and we basically stayed in a cottage and was like a little lagoon We were on and we had a dog that goes right into that lagoon a lot of times We would just jump in and look all over the place all over that lagoon and just enjoy it The unique quality of that lagoon was it had a really pretty strong current So we would walk down the road Jump offense get into the water and basically just snorkel and float along the way Instead of swim against the current because it was just easier that way and we would just kind of float along and just be Observers in the water like snorkelers and scuba divers tend to be and it was wonderful. We had a great time Doing it. We saw like I said yesterday. We saw coral reefs. We saw seagrass beds. There were some mangroves that we went into There's an island that we went on it was just a lot of fun One thing that I noticed and I barely noticed this but really got me on this species that we're talking about today Not the specific species, but I guess the the genius of the species or the family this species I Was coming out of the water. We were close to our docks. What we would do is we sometimes what we would do is we would actually Swim out. We would actually you know go down the road swim because of the current We were in the middle of the goon so our dock was in the middle of the lagoon so we would go down the road jump in the water and then Swim out as far as we could and this basically float back to the point where we would just time it perfectly We would end up on our dock. We wouldn't have to do any extra swimming. We were lazy. Okay. We were lazy That's what we did But it was fun and so what we did is we would do that and so my wife got out of the water Friends of ours got out of the water and I was last one to get out of the water And I was just looking around, you know because when you're near a dock it becomes almost like a habitat You know and and a lot of there's a lot of different fish in there and I'm big into tropical fish So I want to take a look around and see what was happening So I take a look and all of a sudden at the quarter of my eye. I notice like this Flashing of color and I was like what is that I turn around quickly and there's nothing there and So I look up I look around some more as my as my friends are getting out of the water And I look back again because I saw the flash again, and then there's just nothing there and I was like well wait a minute What's going on? So finally I just stared out there, you know, I didn't move move my head I just looked at where the flash was coming from and then all of a sudden I See about 12 different things in the water change color and it changed to a red And then it changed to a green and then it changed to like a multi-color and then it changed back to a light blue Which was the color of the water and I couldn't see them again? They're also visible and what I know is very quickly was that they were and it kept doing it I just stayed in the water I kept doing this my wife's like why are you staying in the water like what's what do you see because they know? I'm like my friends and my wife knew I was seeing something and I popped my head out and I'm like There are about a dozen cuddle fish that are staring right at me and they're all in a line like in a straight line Facing me that's why I can see each I can count I was counting the 12 of them and they would change colors every once in a while So they were like you're crazy. I don't see anything I'm like you can't see him you have to sit in here and just wait So they get in the water and they wait and then all of a sudden they see it again And I was like see I told you like what is that it was cuddle fish and what I love about cuddle fish is they're so freaking cute They they they're like a squid if you picture we're gonna put pictures up on the on the show notes which will be speak up for blue.com for slash session 108, but They're they're they look like a squid where the squid if it's face if it's completely horizontal They're their their tentacles just dangle Right so and they just look and they look at you. They got their eyes there And they're just looking at you and they just kind of hover and and along their mantle Which is sort of like their head along their mantle, which is the the meaty part of the body You just see they have they have these like waves and it kind of keeps them hovering. It's almost like a piece of Material or a piece of their body But it's thin and it just it just sits in a wave and it just kind of flows like this and it goes all around and it's just wonderful If I can find a video of a cuddle fish I'm gonna put it up on the I'll get Nathan to put it up on the blog post But it's just awesome like you look at them and they just change color. They got these these cells known as chromatophores and they just change color, you know that to blend into the background so they can be Completely camouflage and it's why I couldn't see them at first when they flash their their colors because they were camouflaged into the water they were in the middle of a water column in nine feet of water and I couldn't see them and they were having probably about, you know, five to six feet above the sir of Sorry three three feet Three to four feet below the surface and I couldn't see them when they when they when they wanted to camouflage themselves They were cool that I stayed a distance of them. I didn't touch them. I didn't go near them I just want to observe and it was awesome. It was just it was phenomenal And so that's why they after that they just became I got really interested in them I started looking at looking into them a little bit and it was just a lot of fun And then as I did this this podcast episode I started to look at species started to species Tuesday and a man by the name of Dan Marso who's from Australia he kind of got in touch with me and You know, he's I it was actually he got in touch with me after I sent out one of our weekly newsletters And he was really interested in cut-off. It's just one of his favorite things and he's got a feature-length documentary coming out called cut-offish country He's also got a computer game for children called cuddle scuttle, which I'll put though We'll post the links up on the page on the so on the shono's page just so you can take a look at it it's really kind of cool the the the Animation the the cuddle scuttle game is actually like a pac-man game or miss pac-man game for all those gamers out there Who used to play back in the day like myself, and it's just kind of a fun game. He's also got a feature-like film which talks about a specific Port in Australia Southern Australia. I believe it's Spencer golf area and It's we're gonna talk about why I can talk about it now. I guess the populated, you know, the population It's the largest it's the world's largest known population of mass Cuttlefish spawning aggregation, which is for that for the giant for the giant cuttlefish Which let's just talk about the giant cuttlefish before we go into that the giant cuttlefish sepia Apama is native to the southern coast from Brisbane and Queensland all the way to Shark Bay in Western Australia, so it goes all the way around the southern coast it occurs on rocky reefs seagrass beds and sand and mud seafloor up to a depth of 1,100 meters. That's 300 feet give or take It's really kind of a cool species and and the pages that I found really talk about their The way they they spawn the way they reproduce kind of like what we talked about yesterday, but very interesting kind of kind of things they form small groups of spawning aggregations where there's usually one female about 10 9 to 10 males at the most And of course the females protected by the dominant male who's usually the biggest male Will be a very aggressive and very territorial of the female But what happens is it was some what some males do is they actually sneak in by camouflage And so they make him look like the female they can make themselves look like the female and then kind of get close to the female and then breed with the female it's very interesting very interesting way of Strategy of reproducing very sneaky I would say But yeah, so it's a really kind of a cool thing they they can see cuttlefish are interesting because they can see in very low light And then it helps them feed at night and also helps them detect predators and get away from predators, so it's a good survival strategy Now in terms of the role in the ecosystem Australian cuttlefish are eaten by Indo-Pacific bottom those dolphins When the dolphins have been observed to have developed a technique of removing the ink that they can that the cuttlefish can Spread out and the cuttle bone from a cuttlefish before eating it, so that's pretty interesting when you don't have any hands Right, it's pretty interesting to remove that thing. It's just goes to show you how smart dolphins are so The other thing is is in the Spencer golf and the upper Spencer golf they a Lot of times there's there's different ways that the cuttlefish are being affected. Okay, we're gonna talk about their conservation right now You know sometimes when I look up a species I look up at the Wikipedia I'm very careful with Wikipedia, but I look at the Wikipedia and they say the conservation status is not threatening and That's interesting because the upper gall the upper Spencer golf population Which is what just one part of the population is under threat because it is the area with the largest spawning grounds for Australian giant cuttlefish, okay, and so it's a very very hot area for tourism because the cuttlefish are not affected by Divers so it's a very big area for cuttlefish, but because it's in an upper it's in a port or Spencer's golf It's a very active port and there's a lot of industry that are going in there and there's a lot of fishing that are going there because Cuttlefish are used to bait for snapper. So they will be caught In the in prior to the mid-90s the population was fish for snapper bait with annual catches around four tons That's approximately 4,000 cuttlefish During the 1995-1996 spawning seasons commercial fishing of the spawning grounds harvested about 200,000 tons annually That's a big difference for 4,000 tons to 200,000 tons Over exploitation was recognized after after 245,000 tons were harvested in 1997 leading to 50% of the grounds being closed to commercial fishing in 1998 despite half of the grounds being closed commercial fishers took 2,000 tons in 1998 approximately half of the estimated biomass Before dropping to 3.7 tons in 1999 so you can see the management really changed over time The catch data for 2000 and to 2005 had not been released for contravenciality Surveys indicated that the cuttlefish biomass remained stable from 1998 to 2001 a further survey in 2005 revealed that revealed a 34% decrease in biomass since 2001 that had been attributed to natural variability So it just natural causes and illegal fishing during the peak spawning period. So you got to remember when you cut When you're bringing in 100,000s of when 100,000 of cuttlefish are coming in to spawn You're in the biggest and the best cuttlefish to come in and spawn because usually what happens is females will pick the biggest and the best because they think that is a cue for survivorship, right? They can actually survive. The biggest and the best can actually survive You know longer. That's sort of the the trend that happens in nature And I mean we do it in the human population too a lot of times the smartest or the biggest will get you know Sort of get to reproduce. It's kind of like a natural thing We think it as more as a laws of attractiveness, but usually it's becomes more of genetics And so that's what happens in the giant cuttlefish territory the biggest and the best get you know Sort of the female they're more territorial. They're bigger. They can fight off smaller smaller males and but now you're getting 100s and thousands of Hundreds of thousands of cuttlefish coming into this this upper golf Spencer's golf and they are being taken Right illegally, but they're being taken and it's between like it's during the peak spawning period So you're getting rid of all the biggest and the best because the base and the best are gonna get chosen also as bait Because you think if you get the bigger bait, you're gonna get either you can cut up into smaller pieces or you can get bigger Snapper, right? So it's a better return on investment for the fishermen So it becomes a big problem. So this the closure was subsequently expanded Remember it was at half at this point of the breeding grounds was Subsequently expanded to the entire spawning grounds and anecdotal and observation suggested increasing increased numbers in 2006 and 2007 However, a new survey in 2008 found the biomass a decrease of further 17% Catch data for the Australian so that for the South Australian cuttlefish fishery is reported in annual reports in the marine scale fishery blah blah Anyway, that's not a big that's not a big deal, but you can see there's a trend that's going down Right, it's it's actually going down and it's it's it's not good in this area now There was a there was an effort to actually get them considered to get them reported as endangered or get listed as endangered But unfortunately because it's only one part of the population and the rest of the population in Australia are not really suffering as much as this population They're not going to be considered endangered Which is which is? Interesting because this seems to be the place Responding occurs it seems like it's the largest place where spawning occurs where you have hundreds of thousands of animals trying to come in and Spont so you think that this would be a very protected area you think that like a marine protected area you think that it would also be a An area where you would gaze at if this area went down or decreased significantly in terms of numbers of cuttlefish Then you would get out you would have a problem with the population in a few years However, that just what happens now you have fishing problems in the past and now you have other effects of in local industrialization You have hydrocarbon processing plant. That's that's adjoining It's in adjoining port Bonython or bonython. Sorry. I don't know how to pronounce these some of these names And and they've had a couple of spills near the plant, but they you know The company Santos actually says that you know the recent spill didn't spread off site However, the southern Australia EPA said the hydrocarbons had migrated through the rock strata beyond the plant And the barrier trench that was built by Santos So Santos is now providing funding for cuttlefish research also we have BHP billetin has plans to build a desalinization plant and I think there's a few more desalinization plants are going in Roxbury Downs has copper and uranium mines Oh, sorry, there the desalinization plant a point lowly is to supply the fresh water to Roxby Downs copper and uranium mine. So you get a lot of industrial localization there That's going to cause a lot of problems for this area when you've got an increased transportation in there So an increase of vessels in there potential groundings potential destruction of specific habitat You know, you got salinity levels that will change And that can be that can be a problem And there's a lot of public opposition to these poor pros plants and I think this is what Dan Dan Marso who got in touch with me or monso, sorry is is Creating a Documentary on is this is an area that needs to really be looked at in terms of animal rights A hotspot for cuttlefish giant cuttlefish my spawning. It's a very important area It's a it's a distinctive area and it needs to be protected and now with increased local Industrialization you're gonna have some problems anytime increased localization local industrialization happens You're gonna have problems with the environment. Let's be honest. That's that's the nature of the business and It's not until we find more sustainable and dust industries that you're gonna see less of a problem. So Anyway, uh, it's it's gonna be interesting when uh, Dan monso's Project comes to light supposed to come in 2016 We're going to look at it and we're going to try and figure out how to get him on the show And have him on for an interview Wednesday to talk about the program And if we can have it available for you guys on the site, we will Um, so I think look out for that coming in 2016 I think it'll be a lot of fun to watch and just be aware of what's happening around the world Right prod these are the projects that we want to know of what's happening around the world Um, we're gonna put out some some pictures and some videos if we can find it Of the giant Australian cuttlefish and maybe some other cuttlefish to show you they're change how their chromatophores change And we will discover things like that on the page. So, uh, yeah, enjoy it Uh, that's our episode for today. If you want to contribute to our Patreon campaign to get ocean conservation message out into the podcast community By helping our podcast you can do so at www.speakaforblue.com/patreon Our en and become a patron of the show help our ocean conservation message get to the podcast sphere the podcast community And we'd be greatly appreciative of that. That's all for the show today. I just want to thank you for listening in I am your host and you've been listening to speaker for blue podcast happy species Tuesday and happy conservation [Music]