In Monterey Bay, a Mollusk Strays and Stays for Dinner

The fierce Humboldt squid — which can grow to 7 feet long and more than 100 pounds — normally lives in warm waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean from Chile to Baja California, where lucrative commercial fisheries hunt it. But since 2002, large numbers have washed up on California beaches and have been spotted off Monterey and as far north as Alaska.

A new study is confirming what marine biologists around Monterey Bay have suspected: the creatures, also known as jumbo squids, are settling in.

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, researchers combed a database of underwater videos taken by unmanned submersibles during more than 3,000 bay dives since 1989. The first time the squids showed up in droves on camera was 1997, during an El Niño, a temporary shift in ocean conditions that brings warm waters up the Pacific Coast. The animals later disappeared.

They returned with another El Niño in 2002, and this time they stuck around, said Bruce H. Robison, a senior scientist at the research institute, and Louis D. Zeidberg, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University in Pacific Grove. Their findings appear in today’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers have found young jumbos in the bay, a sign that the species may be reproducing there.

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