Giant Squid Photographed At Sea
When a nearly 20-foot long tentacle was hauled aboard his research ship, Tsunemi Kubodera knew he had something big. Then it began sucking on his hands. But what came next excited him most — hundreds of vivid photos of a rare giant squid in its natural habitat deep undersea.
Observing a giant squid in the wild for the first time, Kubodera's team took photos of a 26-foot-long, purplish-red sea monster attacking its bait nearly 3,000 feet undersea, then struggling for more than four hours to get free. The squid pulled so hard on the line that held the shrimp bait that it severed one of its own tentacles.
"It was quite an experience to feel the still-functioning tentacle on my hand," Kubodera, a researcher with Japan's National Science Museum, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But the photos were even better."
The mysterious giant squids, formally called Architeuthis, have for centuries been the stuff of legend, appearing in the myths of ancient Greece or attacking a submarine in Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." But they had previously been seen only when they were caught in fishing nets or washed ashore dead or dying — never alive in their natural habitat.
But the Japanese team, capping a three-year effort, filmed the creature in September of last year, finding what one researcher called "the holy grail" of deep sea animals.
The results were not announced until this week, when they were published in Wednesday's issue of the British journal, the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Kyoichi Mori, of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association, co-authored the study.
Largely because of the sheer difficulty of finding the deep-sea dwelling giant, the team's photos were cheered by researchers around the world.
"That's getting footage of a real sea monster," said Randy Kochevar, a deep sea biologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. "Nobody has been able to observe a large giant squid where it lives. There are people who said it would never be done. It's really an incredible accomplishment."
The photos — taken with strobe lights at 30 second intervals — also shed some new light on the mysterious squid's behavior.
"We think it is a much more active predator than was previously thought," Kubodera said Wednesday. "It had previously been seen as more lethargic, and not as strong."
In the pictures, the squid's tentacles can be seen stretching out toward the bait, grasping it and pulling away in a ball. It is then seen struggling to get itself free of the jig attached to the line under the remote-controlled camera. The struggle took place at a depth of between 2,000 and 3,000 feet.
Kubodera said catching the squid on film was the result of 10 years of sleuthing.
He added that he had some help — from a population of sperm whales.
"We knew that they fed on the squid, and we knew when and how deep they dived," he said. "So we used them to lead us to the squid."
Kubodera and his team found the squid about 10 miles off the remote island of Chichijima, which is about 600 miles southeast of Tokyo. They had been conducting expeditions in the area for about three years before they actually succeeded in making their first contact at 9:15 a.m. on Sept. 20 last year.
"We were very lucky," he said. "A lot of research went into it, but still, others have tried and not succeeded."
Giant squid are the world's largest invertebrates, and can grow to a length of 53 feet. Kubodera said the one he caught on camera was likely an adult female. He said the giant squid's tentacle would not grow back, but the squid's life was not in danger.
New Zealand's leading authority on the giant squid, marine biologist Steve O'Shea, praised the Japanese team's feat.
"Through sheer ... determination the guy has gone on and done it," said O'Shea, chief marine scientist at the Auckland University of Technology, who is not linked to the Japanese research.
O'Shea said he hopes to capture juvenile giant squid and grow them in captivity. He captured 17 of them five years ago but they died.