Notes from an Environmentalist.
Ancient Orgy, Warming Oceans.
Notes From an Environmentalist; at an ancient orgy.
Sep 22, 2023
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Chapter 39
At an Ancient Orgy
High Sandy
September 5, 2013
In early September I decided to visit the Parker River Wildlife Refuge to see where a wooly mammoth had been discovered in 1879. But, instead of finding evidence of geological change, I found evidence of biological change in all its teeming fecundity.
The early morning sun glistened off gelatinous masses of squid eggs stranded in sandy tidal pools. Last night the quivering rays of the full moon filtered through writhing multitudes of these fleshy, foot-long mollusks. They were congregating on the ocean floor to mate and lay their eggs.
Males darted through the school trying to herd individual females away from the pack. Some of the females seemed to be more in demand than others, and the males had to grapple, struggle and occasionally bite their opponents in order to secure an unattached female.
Eventually one of the males would separate a female from the group and the two would swim entwined in each other’s tentacles while the male held his median arm aloft in an elegant “S” shaped courting curve. Chromatophores flared up and down the male’s body and an intense reddish- brown spot pulsated between his eyes. When another male approached the spot would intensify and dark splotches would appear along the side of his body nearest challenging male.
Then the male glided below the female and attempted to grasp her around the middle. She pushed his arms away and darted aside. Again they swam side by side through the frenzied squid.
The tried again. This time she did not resist. His arms moved forward toward her mantle opening.
Holding her in his eight strong distal tentacles he used one of his long median tentacles to reach into his own mantle and withdrew a bundle of spermatophores from the tip of his muscular penis. Then, with one quick motion he plunged the spermatophores bundle deep into her mantle where it ejaculated splattering reservoirs of sperm onto wall of her oviduct.
Within five to ten seconds their mating was over and the female turned her attention to spawning. She reached into her mantle and withdrew an egg capsule encased within a thick mass of sperm impregnated jelly. Holding the capsule before she swam toward the bottom ignoring the advances of her still amorous mate.
Finally she located a focus-covered rock and plunged into the fronds of the leafy brown algae. Then with a series of twists and turns she entwined the egg capsule into the fronds and flushed the eggs one more time with her siphon before darting back to her suitor.
Contact with the seawater hardened the egg jelly and the sight of the new egg mass elicited renewed frenzy among the other cephalopods. One by one other females mated and swam to deposit their egg capsules until a mass of six-inch long egg capsules lifted gently toward the surface to confound this early morning beach walker.
All night long thousands of predatory fish that had also cruised through the school gorging themselves on the succulent squid bodies. But by dawn those squid who had made it through the night had died of sheer exhaustion. Millions of their pale white bodies littered the ocean floor amidst the opalescent masses of eggs that would produce next year’s generation of squid.
There must have been some human fishing going on as well last night. I counted three undersized striped bass on the shore. They had to have been hooked and released during last night’s feeding frenzy.
But this a new ritual on this beach. 2012 was the first year that large numbers of squid started to swim north of Cape Cod to spawn. Global warming has finally warmed the oceans enough to cause such rapid biological changes.
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Bill Sargent’s can be purchased at local bookstores and at www.strawberry hillpress.com, Amazon.com and bsarge100@mail.com.