Outdoors

Red squid spotted on Outer Banks

Winterville resident Carey Walker, who was driving down Portsmouth Island in late March, wasn't alarmed, just curious, when he saw the unusual specimen.

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diamondback squid
By
Brad Rich / Coastal Review Online
PORTSMOUTH VILLAGE — It’s not every day you see a big red squid alive on a beach in Carteret County. If it were, folks might be a bit alarmed. They are, uh, different-looking when they’re big. Maybe not the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” different. Weird enough, though.

But Winterville resident Carey Walker, who was driving down Portsmouth Island in late March, wasn’t alarmed, just curious, when he saw the unusual specimen. He picked it up, and like any good visitor to Core Banks, cared enough about marine life to put it back in the water, after getting a photo or two, of course.

He never saw the squid come back. But he has wondered what it was. And so have many others who’ve seen the photos.

“It was low tide, and we were coming back to the cabins at about 5:30 p.m., and I just saw this thing out of the corner of my eye down at the edge of the water,” Walker recalled. “I actually went past it. But I wanted to see what it was, so I backed the truck up and got out and saw that it was still alive. So I picked up and we got a couple of pictures, and then I put it back in the water.”

Walker and his companions were there for a few more days, and never saw the squid on the beach again. Nor did anyone else they talked to.

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