Giant squids attacking ships and dragging their men to their deaths have always been the stuff of nightmares and consequently made for some great sci-fi/horror villains. Personally, if I ever found myself in the middle of an ocean and saw a giant squid swimming beneath me, I would freak out. Fortunately (for me, anyway), they live only in very deep waters.
In Reemergence, I wanted to bring the classic monster into my story, which, admittedly, may have seemed silly for a Star Trek story. I came up with an idea of using a giant squid that could live in an iceberg, and put it in a context that was fun and exciting for the crew of the Dragonfly (probably not so fun for Captain Seth). The idea of Seth looking at a giant eyeball belonging to a squid originally came from a discovery two years ago that the eye of a colossal squid was over 11-inches in diameter. That’s bigger than the size of a basketball.
Giant or colossal squids are fascinating creatures but very little is currently known about them. Such squid are generally not found near the surface of the water where temperatures are warmer, because the solubility of gases like molecular oxygen is actually poorer at higher temperatures (unlike solutes as salt or sugar). A squid evolving to live in an iceberg still probably couldn’t breathe very well, despite being in the cold (maybe it could have lungs). Also, any organism living within an iceberg would probably require very sophisticated mechanisms to move around in the ice the way I describe it, and would probably need a ridiculous amount of energy. So despite being a fun invention of mine, a giant squid living high above the surface in an iceberg is probably extremely unlikely.
But an organism employing an anti-freeze protein is not far-fetched if it lived in an environment where it is susceptible to freezing. A lot organisms on Earth employ a wide variety of mechanisms to resist freezing, although they all tend to be very small (i.e. insects, frogs, etc). Despite being very cold, giant squid that live in the depths of frigid waters don’t worry about freezing to death because average temperatures are still slightly above zero (1.6 °C), and deep ocean water is very salty, which lowers the freezing point of the water. At those depths, the pressure is also greater to keep the water in a liquid state. Even if it could freeze, the ice would float to the surface.
Disappointingly, recent evidence suggests that giant or colossal squid may not be the ferocious killer that we all fear. A recent paper released on April 20 in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom suggests that the colossal squid is actually quite lazy. The scientists have determined that its metabolism is actually rather slow, far slower than was originally believed when it was thought of as an ‘aggressive predator.’ So rather than actively seeking out its prey, it is much more likely to sit there and wait for its prey to pass by. Kind of takes the horror factor out of them, doesn’t it?
We can fix that. Genetic engineering can do wonders these days.
The abstract of the article can be found here.
To read the chapter where Captain Seth fights a giant ice squid, click here.
