Gotta debate with the weef over this one. She said she was watching some PBS special about the giant squid, and they said that no one has ever captured a living giant squid. I was ready to maybe believe that, but she went on to say that no one has even observed, filmed or photographed a living giant squid. We only find dead ones, and we know there’s even bigger ones than the dead ones we find based on the suckers marks on whales.
Is that right? Surely someone, somewhere, in the history of the world, with all our diving technology and underwater camera technology, has taken at least one friggin’ snapshot? Where is the rich crazy marine biologist nut spending his life trying to capture one? Is there another animal this large that we haven’t seen or don’t have on camera? (Aside from the Loch Ness monster, of course).
Slightly related topic, is there another creature with a more bitchin’ soundin’ scientific name than “Architeuthis dux”?
From what I have heard, we have only found washed up parts. Apparently the orca whales snack on the giant squid and the population is in danger of extinction. Dude, I read somewhere that we have only fully mapped out like 5% of the ocean floor at most, so i wouldnt be surprised if there is a lot to learn.
People have seen live giant squid on the ocean surface in days gone by, but far from a scientific setting, and I don’t think we’ve ever photographed one. I just pulled out my “mysteries of the unkown” book by Time life, and I’ll give a quote:
“Even though sightings were frequent and observations remarkably similar, the giant squid was still considered a mythical sea monster until the 1870s. Then, for reasons scientists were at a loss to explain, no less then a dozen of the tentacled creatures were reported in Newfoundland. Most were found stranded on the shores, and a few of them were identified or examined by experts. But one chance encounter in 1873 provided three hapless fishermen and the scientific community with the proof of what generations of seafarers had known all along - that the giant squid not only existed but could be a mortal threat.”
It goes on to describe a dangerous encounter with a dory and a giant squid, wonderful paintings too (Hope I don’t get in trouble from any copywriters).
I read somwhere else about an old navey ship that once came across a living squid, and managed to get a rope around it and tried to haul it onboard… unfortunately it’s own weight caused the squid to be ripped in half, killing it. I once again read somewhere that it’s thought when a big squid has a bad encounter (with a predator?) that they sometimes come up and rest near the surface, and have a deep purple “stressed” color, causing them to be mistaken for big mats of kelp or other seaweed. Unfortunatley, with practically every boat on the seas nowadays having a big loud engine, sea creatures can hear them coming from miles away, and disappear, hence no more sightings.
We have photographed species of big squid. I have on tape some footage of divers feeding a species of squid that was about 5-8 feet long from a cage. On a giant squid documentary, I vaguely recall a sonar image caught that showed something the size of a giant squid that may have been feeding from a shoal of fish or plankton; but no actual SCIENTIFIC observation, sightings, or pictures of giant squid have been captured yet.
Yeah, just before I post Karlgrenze gives a link to one kind of big squid I was talking about; humboldt squid. Those things are spooky; the footage I saw was of them being fed chunks of fish. They were huge, about the size of the divers (who were wisely in a shark cage). They moved real fast, backwards, forwards, anything. They seem pretty excitable too, and one took a bite out of another squid with it’s beak - about the size of a grape fruit it looked like. I’m sure never gonna try to pet one of those things!!
I seem to have seen somewhere that it has been found that the oxygen-carrying component of the giant squid’s blood does not function very well at lower pressures, and so to stay healthy they have to remain at fairly great depths.
I did see some show on TV about a bay in Spain where squid are fished commercially; they were only about 3-4 feet long but (to me) surprisingly fast-moving and vicious, biting baseball-sized chunks out of bait. The poor local fishermen talked of losing fathers/uncles/sons who fell over and were fatally injured or totally lost to the squid. The show had a camera underwater, but didn’t show any divers down there with them. - MC
The giant squid would likely have the same type of blood as other cephalopods;one based on copper rather than iron, the oxygen carrying component being hemocyanin. This system does have less O2 binding capacity, but squid pump a lot of water through their gills and need as little as 8% of the O2 that comes through; they can use more of the capacity due to the amount of water going over the gills compared to a fish. There is less oxygen available in the ocean depths, and the first few hundred meters has the most, and most small squid can be found rather shallow - they even jump! The humbolt squid and big octopus don’t need great depth, so it’s probly something else that causes giant squid to live deep. Which makes it a pain to:
a) find them
b) film them
I think I saw the same show your wife watched. It was maddening, actually, because it was your typical NOVA-type documentary where you think they’re building false suspense because of course they’re going to find a squid! Why would they make a show out of it otherwise? I was glued to the screen. It was getting closer to the end of the special… and they (the research expedition) weren’t having luck, but they were getting all these reports of commercial fishermen finding record-sized dead one in their nets… so it was a banner year for squid… And the thing ended with them NEVER SEEING, FILMING, OR CATCHING ONE. ARGH! I nearly threw the remote through the TV screen.
I think the two hotspots for this giant squid are SE of NZ and SE of Newfoundland. And when the water gets warmer then normal a lot (relatively speaking of course) dead and dieing ones will surface. So they have seen dieing ones, but that’s not what we want. Dieing usually means their heart may still be beating but they basically don’t move. And I bet they’re almost always dead, and only very very rarely are they barely alive.
Unfortunately all we have are these little windowed and bulky submersables. And these highly agile squids can quite easily stay far enough away from them so they aren’t seen. The show you mention (which is about a year or two old I believe) mentioned one maverick who had the bright idea to just drop to the ocean floor, turn off everything including the lights and just sit there and hope one came into his sight. It didn’t of course. I think the analogy they gave was trying to find something in a pitch black night in the Grand Canyon with a match.
is the webpage about the national geographic expedition to the Kaikoura canyon off the coast of the South Island of NZ. They didn’t manage to see or photograph one
I would like to point out that while Humboldt squid (Dosidicus iagas) are alarmingly large, they are not the Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux), which can grow to about 60ft. Which is absurdly $#@! huge.
The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has a preserved one that washed ashore, dead of course, in Massachusetts. The placard confirms that no one has ever seen a live one.
Well, there’s the St. Augustine Monster. It was once estimated to be 200’ from tentacle to tentacle. The problem is, for a hundred years, nobody has wanted to believe that this critter exists. I presume that the Smithsonian still has some samples, but I don’t know if its DNA has been tested.
This critter does not appear to be the measly giant octopus of the Pacific Northwest, which is a mere thirty feet long, tops.
