The kraken is real...

[Knight-Dragon]

God knows what else lurks in the deep...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2005092...gIDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Squid's in -- and now it's on film

PARIS (AFP) - Japanese zoologists have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world.

The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak, Architeuthis has long nourished myth and literature, most memorably in Jules Vernes' "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," in which a squid tried to engulf the submarine Nautilus with its suckered tentacles.

Until now, the only evidence of giant squids was extraordinarily rare -- from dead squids that washed up on remote shores or got snagged on a long-line fish hook or from ships' crews who spotted the deep-sea denizen as it made a sortie near the surface.

But almost nothing was known about where and how Architeuthis lives, feeds and reproduces. And, given the problems of getting down to its home in the ocean depths, no-one had ever obtained pictures of a live one.

Scientists went to extreme lengths, backed by TV companies, to be the first.

In 1997 the US National Geographic Society attached video cameras by a temporary cord to sperm whales in the hope that this would get pictures of a whale dining on one of the giant cephalopods.

In 2003, New Zealand marine biologists laid a sex trap.

They ground up some squid gonads, believing that the scent would drive male giant squids wild as the creatures migrated through New Zealand waters.

The hope was that a camera would squirt out the pureed genitals and a passing squid, driven into a sexual frenzy, would then mate with the lens -- a project that, some may be relieved to hear, never came to fruition.

The breakthrough has come from Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum in Tokyo and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association.

Writing in a British scientific publication, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Kubodera and Mori describe how they also used sperm whales as a guide.

Whale watchers on the Ogawara Islands, in the North Pacific, had long noted the migratory patterns of sperm whales, observing in particular how the mammals would gather near a steep and canyoned continental shelf, about 10-15 kilometers (six to nine miles) southeast of Chichijima Island.

By attaching depth loggers to the whales, the watchers found the creatures made enormous dives of up to 1,000 metres (3,250 feet) -- just at the depths where the giant squid is believed to lurk.

They then set up a special rig, comprising a camera, stroboscope light, timer, depth sensor, data logger and a depth-activated switch attached to two mesh bags filled with a tempting bait of freshly mashed shrimps.

Suspended from floats, the rig was lowered into the water on a nylon line, with flash pictures taken every 30 seconds for the next four to five hours.

At 9:15 am on September 30 2004, squids as we know them changed forever.

At that moment, 900 metres (2,925 feet) down in the Stygian gloom, an eight-metre (26-feet) specimen lunged at the lower bait bag, succeeding only in getting itself impaled on the hook.

For the next four hours, the squid tried to get itself off the hook as the camera snapped away every 30 seconds, gaining not only unprecedented pictures but also precious information about how the squid is able to propel itself.

After a monstrous battle, the squid eventually freed itself, but left behind a giant tentacle on the hook.

When the severed limb was brought up to the surface, its huge suckers were still able to grip the boat deck and any fingers that touched them -- testimony indeed to the myths of yore, that spoke of monstrous arms that grabbed ships and hauled them to their doom.

Kubodera and Mori have carried out a DNA test from the tentacle, and the result concurs with that of other samples taken from washed-up squid.

Their deep-sea pictures suggest that the squid is far from being the "sluggish, neutrally buoyant" creature that it has traditionally been deemed to be.

Quite the opposite, say the Japanese duo. It is an active predator that attacks its prey horizontally, and its two long tentacles coil up into a ball after the strike, rather like pythons that rapidly envelop their prey in their sinuous curves.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928...c4DW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Scientists Photograph Giant Squid in Wild

By HIROKO TABUCHI, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO - The giant squid can be found in books and in myths, but for the first time, a team of Japanese scientists has captured on film one of the most mysterious creatures of the deep-sea in its natural habitat.

The team led by Tsunemi Kubodera, from the National Science Museum in Tokyo, tracked the 26-foot long Architeuthis as it attacked prey nearly 3,000 feet deep off the coast of Japan's Bonin islands.

"We believe this is the first time a grown giant squid has been captured on camera in its natural habitat," said Kyoichi Mori, a marine researcher who co-authored a piece in Wednesday's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The camera was operated by remote control during research at the end of October 2004, Mori told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Mori said the giant squid, purplish red like its smaller brethren, attacked its quarry aggressively, calling into question the image of the animal as lethargic and slow moving.

"Contrary to belief that the giant squid is relatively inactive, the squid we captured on film actively used its enormous tentacles to go after prey," Mori said.

"It went after some bait that we had on the end of the camera and became stuck, and left behind a tentacle" about six yards long, Mori said.

Kubodera, also reached by the AP, said researchers ran DNA tests on the tentacle and found it matched those of other giant squids found around Japan.

"But other sightings were of smaller, or very injured squids washed toward the shore — or of parts of a giant squid," Kubodera said. "This is the first time a full-grown, healthy squid has been sighted in its natural environment in deep water."

Kubodera said the giant squid's tentacle would not grow back, but the squid's life was not in danger.

Jim Barry, a marine biologist at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, has searched for giant squid on his own expeditions without luck.

"It's the holy grail of deep sea animals," he said. "It's one that we have never seen alive, and now someone has video of one."

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 in captivity.

"Our reaction is one of tremendous relief that the so-called ... race (to film the giant squid) is over ... because the animal has consumed the last eight or nine years of my life," O'Shea said of the film.

Giant squid have long attracted human fascination, appearing in myths of the ancient Greeks, as well as Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Scientific interest in the animals has surged in recent years as more specimens have been caught in commercial fishing nets or found washed up on shores.

Kubodera would make no claims about the scientific significance of his team's work.

"As for the impact our discovery will have on marine research, I'll leave to other researchers to decide," he said.

Other biologists saidi they expected the video would provide insight on the animal's behavior underwater.

"Nobody has been able to observe a large giant squid where it lives," said Randy Kochevar, a deep sea biologist also with the Monterey aquarium. "There are people who said it would never be done."

 

[h4ppy]

Cool, too bad they didn't have a regular camera, I'd have loved to have been able to download a video of it.

 

[amadeus]

Too bad Iron Chef was cancelled.

 

[Narz]

Yum, pureed squid gonads!

 

[Ultima Dragoon]

There's pictures up at:
National Geographic
And a few threads at somethingawful; i'm not going to link them though.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Fabulous!!

 

[Ramius75]

oh nice nice, if its not endangered, i hope to see it in a restuarant soon

i love squid

 

[Ultima Dragoon]

*drools like homer* Mmmm, wheel-sized calamari rings

 

[The Last Conformist]

Pretty neat.

 

[Rambuchan]

Dat's some bigass calamari

Throws pictures and accounts from medieval mariners about sea monsters into a new light:


Captain Nemo observing a giant octopus from the viewing port of the submarine Nautilus.

And these are available for hire known to have been sighted in Denmark.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

If scary alien critters like that are in our own oceans, imagine whats waiting for us at Europa.

 

[Stefan Haertel]

A new and long-sought species is found and everybody just thinks about eating it.

*sigh*

 

[Bozo Erectus]

I dont understand how anyone could look at this thing and want to eat it.

 

[The Last Conformist]

If scary alien critters like that are in our own oceans, imagine whats waiting for us at Europa.

I don't think a squid, even if very large, is particularly alien.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Alien in outward physical appearance. For me anyway, tentacles = alien.

 

[Stefan Haertel]

I dont understand how anyone could look at this thing and want to eat it.

Me neither. It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long time.

I don't think a squid, even if very large, is particularly alien.

That's right, the creature has probably been around for much longer than mankind anyway.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Beautiful, yes. Maybe its just me, but anything the size of a bus, with a beak, enormous eyes and tentacles, and that would like to eat me, is alien.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Maybe its just me, but anything the size of a bus, with a beak, enormous eyes and tentacles, and that would like to eat me, is alien.

My old technology teacher was an alien?!?

 

[Bozo Erectus]

My old technology teacher was an alien?!?

Very likely