On Saturday, April 21st, I found myself driving to San Francisco with a dead squid in the trunk. The squid part wasn't unusual, since I'm an educator with Squids4Kids. The unusual part was my destination: the San Franscisco Center for the Book. I've brought squid to classrooms and summer camps for years, but never to a nonprofit foundation for book arts.

"Fugitive" by Michelle Wilson - paper handmade from invasive plants, selectively exposed to light

The occasion was SFCB's annual Earth Day Extravaganza, where I oscillated between fielding questions about squid and exploring the center's current art exhibition, "Left to Chance: In Search of the Accidental Book Art." In honor of the 100th birthday of avant-garde composer John Cage, the pieces all shared an element of luck or randomness. This may sound weird–but it made me think of science. Could Cage's emphasis on making people notice their existing environment, along with pieces in "Left to Chance" that made use of natural accidents like sunlight fading paper, be just another manifestation of the scientist's urge to observe and describe the natural world? Fun fact: Cage himself was an amateur mycologist; his collection of fungi is currently housed at UC Santa Cruz.

Earth Is Awesome, Press and Broadside - photo by Monica LeMaster

Plenty of other people were perusing the artwork, but Saturday's hands-on activities were the real draw. As SFCB co-founder Kathleen Burch said, "People want to get their hands inky." At one classic Vandercook printing press, you could create a broadside in blue ink: EARTH IS AWESOME. Another printed a book cover in green ink with 10 tips for easing up on Earth. At the next table, you added pages and bound the book by hand. (All the matierals were either donated or recycled.)

And then, in the back room, you could print a squid.

If you're not familiar with gyotaku, the phrase "squid printing" may conjure peculiar images. Is the squid run through a press? Cut into letter type? Actually, it just sits on a table while visitors line up to roll ink over it. Once the squid has been thoroughly inked and its arms and tentacles artistically arranged, you drop a large piece of paper on top and press it down. Peel the paper off, and you've got a squid print.

Squid Printing - photo by Monica LeMaster

Printmaker Julie Whitcomb has been the activity's catalyst. Last year she drove to the Squids4Kids lab and picked up the specimen herself. This year I joined the fun solely in my capacity as a science nerd; I have very limited experience with printing. I babbled about ecology while SFCB volunteers guided visitors through the printing process–which included hand-cut stamps to label major parts of the squid's anatomy.

Like all the other visitors, I walked out at the end of the day with a broadside, a book, and a squid print. But I had one more goodie in my bag: when all the printing was done, I had extracted the squid's statoliths, tiny ear bones that can tell us how old the squid was.

It's my favorite kind of day when science, education, and art all hold hands.

The squid, along with pink dolphins and matamata turtles are all stars of the new Jean Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures web original video series, produced for PBS by KQED and the Ocean Futures Society.

Now, if we can just get Bay Area Bites to post some more calamari recipes…

Craig Rosa is the Interactive Producer for QUEST.

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If you haven't read it already, see my Producer's Notes blog post for this story for the real scoop on squid.


View the web-exclusive premiere of "The Fierce Humboldt Squid," our first Season 2 QUEST TV story. Season 2 begins on broadcast TV next Tuesday, April 1 at 7:30pm on KQED, Channel 9 in Northern California.


See additional photos of these fearsome leviathans of the deep, including close-up tentacles, beaks and an actual squid necropsy.

Chris Bauer is a Segment Producer for television on QUEST, and is the producer for this story.

Humboldt Squid – known as "Diablos Rojos".

I get seasick.

Still, I love being out on the ocean and never turn down the chance to get out beyond the breakers. We set out on the charter fishing boat Huli Cat from Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay. The boat was aiming for an area the captain called the “Dover Grounds,” about 20 miles out to sea. On the way, we passed a migrating pod of Humpback whales, coming so close that we could smell their breath as they spouted. We passed through vast fields of pink jellyfish that covered the surface as far as the eye could see. We saw mola mola (or ocean sunfish) rising to the surface to be cleaned by waiting seagulls. As we got closer to our destination, a gang of playful porpoises caught up to the boat and began surfing the bow wave.

Producer Chris Bauer fishes for squid -
and tries to stay on his feet.Just then, the boat’s radio cackled with Coast Guard chatter. A container ship had struck the Bay Bridge and was leaking vast amounts of oil into the San Francisco Bay. It seemed a world away and at that time we had no idea what kind of impact the oil spill would have on those very waters. The captain scanned the fish finder and we drifted to a stop. Fishermen began letting out their lines and a lone albatross landed off the stern. He looked at me in a curious way, maybe wondering why I appeared somewhat greener than the other people on the boat.

It was not long before the first Humboldt squid was pulling on a line. Soon all the anglers were straining at their reels. Fishing for Jumbo squid isn’t as much about finesse as it is about brute force. The rods seemed to be at the point of snapping and the angler’s arms burned as they reeled in Jumbo squid from 800 feet below.

So why are these animals arriving here in Northern California? And what impact does this “invasion” have on the fragile ocean ecosystem? As QUEST begins our second television season, we’ll join this trip and meet one of the foremost experts on Humboldt squid, Professor Bill Gilly from Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station. Tune in on Tuesday, April 1st, on our website or on KQED channel 9, to learn more about these amazing animals.

Chris Bauer is a Segment Producer for television on QUEST.