The Squid and the Pirate

Several months ago, I boldly proclaimed that we were clearly in the midst of the Decade of the Pirate, what with all of the stories about buccaneers taking over cargo ships on the high seas. Not to mention the Johnny Depp movies. And Alan Tudyk's character in Dodgeball.

A few weeks later, I proclaimed - no less boldly - that I had proclaimed too soon because it then appeared that this actually was shaping up to be the Decade of the Octopus. (Virtually irrefutable proof here and here.)

And then ... silence.

Pirates and octopi seemingly had fallen off of the radar. Fewer pirate sightings was, I'm sure, good news for those who were responsible for traveling the highly prized Somali Coast route. But the sudden lack of information about eight-armed sea creatures was a troubling development for SFTC because, back in May, I promised you that this blog would be "The source you can rely on for the latest in octopus news."

Thankfully - for me, if not for sailors - pirates are back in the headlines. Unfortunately - for the pirates, at least - the latest attack went a little awry. Instead of storming a cargo ship, as they had planned, they (oopsie!) mistakenly attacked a French military vessel. Now, I don't know much about pirating, but I'm guessing one of the first rules is not to attack a boat on which everyone is armed and has military training.

Even if they are French.

And although I haven't read too much about octopi lately, squid news is close enough, right? OK, good. Because Yahoo News recently ran this piece about scientists accidentally discovering a 105-pound giant squid. (By the way, for a 105 pound mass of future sushi, isn't the word "giant" redundant?)

I especially liked that the writer points out that the discovery reminds us "how little is known about life in the deep waters of the Gulf." Perhaps that's because researchers don't really want to mess with the huge freakin' killer squid living down there.