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+--- Thread: Research Squid are taking over the ocean – And not for the reason you might think (/thread-21279.html)
Squid are taking over the ocean – And not for the reason you might think - C C - Sep 7, 2026
https://www.sciencealert.com/squid-are-taking-over-the-ocean-and-not-for-the-reason-you-might-think
INTRO: We've made some drastic changes to ocean ecosystems in the past century. One of the stranger patterns to appear in this is a global proliferation of tentacled creatures known as cephalopods, and in particular, squids.
Decades of ocean warming and overfishing may be correlated with an increase in the sheer volume of squid. But researchers are warning we can't necessarily expect them to fill the gaps left by heat-shocked, depleted, and displaced fisheries.
In 2016, a team led by researchers at the University of Adelaide found cephalopod populations had increased across six decades' worth of data. Their study showed this increase occurred regardless of the presence of a fishery, "suggesting that trends are not solely due to factors associated with developing fisheries".
They proposed the squid boom could be because the predators that would usually keep squid numbers down have been overfished. But because the trend occurred even outside of fished areas, they also suggested that the increased sea temperatures that have come with climate change could be playing a role.
These are interesting ideas, but as marine biologist Rémy Denéchère and team write in a preprint, "the proposed explanations for the historical increase in squid abundance are speculative, and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear".
The researchers found that warmer seas might not necessarily mean squid proliferate as a direct result of overfishing or climate change.
They used computer models of ecosystems to see how squid (and other fish in the environment) would theoretically be affected by a drop in predators and by changes in water temperature.When top predators were overfished, squid abundance increased – but that didn't compensate for the significant decline in predatory fish biomass.
Squid did not simply fill the void left by their predators... (MORE - details)