TV review: Nature Shock: Killer Squid | The Deep

Published on Tuesday 31 August 2010 14:53

Nature Shock: Killer Squid Five The Deep BBC1

Forget global warming. Stop worrying about antibiotic-resistant pandemics. Ignore the oil running out and the threat of asteroids on collision courses with Earth, for there is something much more serious to concern us. Giant squid!

Not giant in the Godzilla sense of a mutated radiation monster coming to eat Toyko, just your basic giant squid, which only reach about six feet in length. That doesn't sound so bad. But, according to Nature Shock, packs of up to 1,200 hunting together, each with more than 40,000 razor-sharp teeth - that's each - are coming to get us. And, like the Terminator, they can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with and they absolutely will not stop until we are dead. Or until they've had enough fish.

"The voracious advance of the giant Humboldt squid is causing havoc all around the world!" began the programme, menacingly. I know, it's all anyone is talking about, isn't it? "Millions of these alien-like creatures are now swarming across the Pacific Ocean, consuming everything in their path and conquering territories as far apart as Chile and Alaska."

Wait - Alaska? Wasn't that ruled until recently by Sarah Palin? Are they saying she was pushed out by a giant squid? Knowing the loonier elements of her Tea Party chums, Glenn Beck's probably gearing up to denounce Barack Obama on Fox News as a squid spy. After all, he is suspiciously tall and gangly.

The "invasion of the Humboldt squid," as the programme sombrely called it, began in 2002 and may be due to changes in the ocean climate (so, perhaps we should worry about global warming as well). They've always existed - they are thought to be the source of old fishermen's legends about the Kraken, the mythical sea monster - but never in such profusion. Each female can lay 30 million eggs and each squid can eat 27,000 tons of fish in just two years. So they're now wiping out stocks of salmon, hake and cod along the American and Canadian coast.

But while they're after "our" fish, they may also attack humans who get in the way. Divers have been attacked and had their masks torn off; two fishermen in Mexico were reportedly pulled underwater and ripped to shreds.

Scott Cassell is our last best hope in the war to come: our John Connor, our Luke Skywalker, our Captain Birdseye if you will. He is a former Special Forces man, a specialist diver who has devoted himself to the study of the squid. Scott, said the narration grimly, "is on a mission to halt this invasion before there is nothing left in the water but giant squid".

Cassell dives at night using "top secret military technology" (from, presumably, the Navy Seals unit). But he has a crazy theory: the squid are working together. They're planning their offensives, co-ordinating their attempts to gain new territories, communicating through colour changes on their skin.

Having raised our alarm, Nature Shock left it there.At least we've been warned.

The turgid underwater mini-series The Deep paddled to a wet conclusion last night and would have been vastly more entertaining if it had been about giant squid. I think it's best if we all just pretend it never happened, OK?