Lifeguards Have a Feast as Squid by Hundreds Wash Up on Beaches

Hundreds of squid carried by unusually warm currents and strong surf washed ashore Friday along some of San Diego and Orange counties’ most popular surfing and sunbathing beaches.

“I’ve seen little squid before, a few dead seals, but never anything like these,” said Israel Paskowitz, 27, a champion surfer whose family runs a surfing school at San Onofre State Park in northern San Diego County.

The pink and black animals, some as long as 3 feet and gooey to the touch, began coming ashore with the rising tide at San Onofre, Doheny State Park and Salt Creek State Park early Friday. About 100 squid were counted at Doheny, and the dead and dying creatures were strewn at 5-foot intervals along some stretches of San Onofre.

A few squid up to 3-feet long were found partly eaten by sea gulls at Ocean Beach Thursday morning, lifeguards said. None were found ashore there Friday.

At San Onofre, lifeguards were busy using their break time filleting portions of the baby squid. Shaun Healy, 23, a five-year lifeguard veteran, said he was planning a barbecue of epic proportions.

“We’ve got 60 pounds of ice on the way, and we’re going to cut these guys up and stash them away,” Healy said. “I’ve got at least 30 pounds already. Then we’ll have a giant cookout on the beach.”

Marine biologists say the marooned animals are the offspring of a large South American variety of squid known as “Jumbo” or “Humboldt” squid that live off Peru, Chile and Ecuador.

In their natural habitat, adults can get up to 12 feet long, but in local waters they are rarely longer than 4 feet.

The juvenile squid drift north on warm currents from their home waters every 10 to 20 years, said Eric Hochberg, a squid expert and curator of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Sightings in Southern California have been recorded as far back as the 1860s.

“They usually last a couple of years here but don’t reproduce in these waters so they die out,” Hochberg said.

What kills them, marine biologists say, is, in effect, their own appetites. They feed on sardines and will follow grunion to shore when the grunion come in to spawn.

“They’ll follow them ashore and get too close and get battered by the surf,” Hochberg said. “Then they’ll get sand in their body cavities and one of those two things will kill them.”

Lifeguards at Orange County’s southernmost beaches seemed to be finding the largest concentrations of baby jumbo squid.

This summer’s record high water temperatures, which hovered around 70 degrees Friday, are part of the reason for the squids’ arrival, said Fred Roberts, assistant curator of the UC Irvine Museum of Systematic Biology.

Also the lack of a prevailing northwest wind and three consecutive storms through June and July have left Southern California ocean waters resembling those found in the tropics, Roberts said.

“We are having a very early storm season this year and, without the wind to stir up the water, the temperatures can rise up into the 70s,” Roberts said. “Warm water always brings in a different variety of organisms.”

Hochberg said the squid cluttering the beaches are edible.

“This is the type of squid you will see advertised as abalone-style squid or calamari steaks,” Hochberg said. He cautioned, however, that any squid left too long in the sun should be left alone.