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typhlonectes:

World Octopus and Squid Populations Are Booming

by Patrick Monahan

New research shows that human induced environmental changes to marine environments are leading to a surge of cephalopods, the invertebrate group that includes octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish.

Scientists have noticed a growth in cephalopod catches around the world since the late 1990s. But drawing conclusions from national fisheries data can be tricky. Not only can catch numbers be misreported, but changes in catch amounts can also be influenced by factors that change the amount of time people spend fishing—like the price of fish and the cost of fuel—or by technological advances that allow fishers to catch more.

So an increase in cephalopod catch doesn’t necessarily mean there are more cephalopods in the ocean. To solve this problem, researchers looked for data that would allow them to calculate how much fishers catch over a given time period—a more reliable metric of actual cephalopod population numbers…

(read more: Science Magazine/AAAS)

photograph by Diliff | Wikipedia