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Northern Squid moving further north as oceans warm

WINNIPEG — Climate change is causing the Northern Squid to migrate farther north, a University of Manitoba researcher reports in this week's Polar Research journal.

The squid is starting to move because of warmer ocean temperatures, says Kathleen Gardiner, a PhD student in biology at the U of M.

The Northern Squid is not the giant squid of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea fame. It's only a foot long, not including tentacles. The squids are found in Hudson Strait and Davis Strait in the high Arctic.

The squids play an important role as a food source for other Arctic species such as whales, seals and cod.

There are indications the squid is moving north into cooler waters as the Arctic warms, according to Gardiner.

Gardiner hopes her work can point towards habitat management for the creatures. "Once we find the 'hot spots,' breeding grounds and feeding grounds, we can protect these areas," she says.

Gardiner and her advisor and co-author Terry Dick have been collecting data from a variety of sources and plotting the distribution so that a better understanding of the squid's extent can be calculated.

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