Has Architeuthis been seen alive?

Joined
Nov 11, 2003
Messages
3
Hello all! I'm new to the forum. I have a question that's been driving me crazy.

There was a report of a French Racing boat Geronimo being attacked by a giant squid reported as Architeuthis. According to reports, the sailors did see it alive. Is this true? Has Archie been seen alive?

By the way, I'm a student and I'm writing a research paper on giant squid, so the information will be most helpful. Also, I'd like to ask permission to use information I find here in my paper.

Thank you all soooo much!
Amoreena
Squid's Ink Design (my graphic design company)
 
Hi Squidsinkdesign, (wow, strange name, but I like it!)

Welcome to TONMO, I hope you like it here and look forward to your posts.

:welcome:

With reference to your queries, apologies to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid the story of the squid attacking the Jules Verne Trophy yacht ‘Geronimo’ turned out to be a hoax. Suspicions were aroused almost immediately about this as no-one on board bothered to take a photograph of the beast, you’d think given the sheer improbability of the encounter someone would have done this.

The tale eventually unfolded as follows. Last January 13th, the ‘Geronimo’ got something snagged on its rudder, and they had to come to a full stop to cut it loose and make repairs. For some reason the crew radioed their home-base to tell them that a giant squid had attached itself to the rudder for a joke (this was the Jules Verne Trophy after all). The base-station called the media and reported the story almost immediately and the story began to be circulated. By then the damage had been done and despite follow up communications with the yacht crew confirming that the entire tale was apocryphal, the media largely failed to report the resolution of the story. The incident is listed in the ships log as ‘stopped to repair rudder’.

However, Architeuthis has indeed been seen alive, though very rarely and usually only when it is dying. Occasionally these animals are brought to the surface in trawl nets. There are some stunning photos of a live Architeuthis available on 'Living Architeuthis Thread', which caused a bit of a stir a month or so ago as they were the first photos to be displayed on an English language web-site as far as we can tell.

For information on Architeuthis and the larger(?) Mesonychoteuthis, the Fact Sheet available here
is full of interesting and useful information (Don't believe what you read in the press about the giant squid. Most of it is wrong!)


Hope that helps!


:meso:
 
Looks like um... beat me to it! We must have crossed over replies.

8)
 
Phil:

With reference to your queries, apologies to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid the story of the squid attacking the Jules Verne Trophy yacht ‘Geronimo’ turned out to be a hoax.

Do you have a reference to that? I am following up various alleged giant squid attacks and (although I read it wasn't true in another thread here) I haven't been able to track down any resources that confirm this. Clearly (as with a lot of these reports) the "urmmmmmm it wasn't really true" statement is less newsworthy than the "Giant Squid Attacks".

Sail World were keeping a close track of events and reported the 'attack':

http://www.sail-world.com/index.cfm?Nid=8392

but there is no mention there (or anywhere I can find online) of a follow up.

Emps
 
:welcome: to TONMO.com

Only adult architeuthis and a few larval archis have been seen alive. There are photos of the adult in the other thread but sadly it wasn't captured on film. The larval squid were caught on film and Steve O tried to raise them unsuccessfully. You can catch Steve's docu "On the Trail of Giants". I do not know when it will next be shown though.
 
Wowie! That's amazing! I have seen the discovery channel show several times. I'm actually going to go to the discovery store and buy myself a copy. Thank you all so much for the pictures from Japan.

I think I'm gonna like it here. :heee:
 
Emperor said:
Do you have a reference to that? I am following up various alleged giant squid attacks and (although I read it wasn't true in another thread here) I haven't been able to track down any resources that confirm this.
Hello Emps,

Welcome to TONMO. You asked a good question, there; I haven't yet found an official retraction of the Geronimo story, though I do recall reading one earlier this year. I'll keep looking.

joel_ang said:
There are photos of the adult in the other thread but sadly it wasn't captured on film.
Joel,

Not that we know of, at any rate. Wouldn't surprise me if tape recorded at the rockpool were to show up, someday. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I can't believe there was only one still-cam present.

Yours truly,

Clem
 
Thanks for the kind welcome :smile: I'm no squid expert (although I have studied invertebrate palaeontology) but I am interested in the more 'unusual' cephalopod aspects and time and again I always seem to find myself back here as one of the leading resources online.

You asked a good question, there; I haven't yet found an official retraction of the Geronimo story, though I do recall reading one earlier this year. I'll keep looking.

I did a quick nose around online resources starting here:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=287937#post287937

and basically of the 4 big cases (not including the attack on the Geronimo) all the information is pretty much identical with just enough details for them to seem real but not quite enough to make it easy to track down any further information (suggesting that they may be derived from one source and it may not be an entirely reliable one). On the face of this this case should be the easiest to track down information for but seems elusive (mainly because such retrations are hardly big news).

I'll email the support team and see if they have any further information as their press office doesn't seem to have anything relevant:

http://www.rivacom.fr/scripts/index.cfm?fuseaction=Communique&eve_num=32&com_num=255

although a complete lack of a mention here:

http://www.rivacom.fr/scripts/index.cfm?fuseaction=Communique&eve_num=32&com_num=208

is probably significant :wink:

I'll pass on anything they say.

-----------
Giant Squid attacks have been discussed here:

TONMO Cephalopod Community

and a critique and discussion of the National Geographic article is here:

TONMO Cephalopod Community

but again nothing concrete which sort of leaves the case in limbo.

Emps
 

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