Big Game at Sea 



care to try conclusions with an animal possessing ten 

 arms any one of which might whisk a man from the 

 boat and drown him. With the small specimens it 

 is different, though their strength is disproportionate 

 to their size, and a fifteen-foot octopus, or a seven- 

 or eight-foot squid sometimes becomes active game 

 when faced by a single man. 



Squids ranging from one to seven or eight feet in 

 length are at times common on the Californian coast. 

 On one occasion, as I was poling along the kelp- 

 lined shores of Santa Catalina Island, spear in hand, 

 I suddenly found myself in the center of a school of 

 them, ranging from four to eight feet in length. 

 The water appeared to be filled with phantom forms 

 darting backward with incredible rapidity, changing 

 direction as quickly, stopping to throw out their 

 tongue-like arms, then dashing into shallow water 

 and entangling themselves in the kelp, chased by a 

 band of fierce tunas that were only stayed by the 

 shallow water. After the melee I found that there 

 were a dozen or more of the animals dead on the 

 bottom, which were gladly received by the Italian 

 fishermen who salted them down for bait. Three 

 were later secured alive, and with great difficulty 

 placed in a large tank in the zoological station, where 

 they lived some hours, to the amazement of the local 

 population, who had never seen so weird an animal; 

 and it is possible that squids of such size were never 

 seen in captivity before. The largest was about 



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