New Giant Squid Video Reported on Reuters!

[Steve O'Shea]

Heavens! I must be the last person in the world to see that video, and have spent the best part of the morning struggling with dialup just to download it, and read the articles!

Hmmmm. That squid is very much alive! It is propelling out water from that siphon every 3 to 5 seconds, and doing so forcibly (when of shorter periodicity, ~ 3 seconds, there is less water expelled (less blast), so the animal has not completely inflated the mantle; when ~ 5 seconds there is a large blast of water, meaning complete inflation in that time). The fact that it does not lift those arms out of the water is not because it is exhausted (I'm not saying it is because it is too weak to do so, but it is not because of exhaustion; there could be some other reason).

I am aware of 3 separate current/imminent expeditions to find & film this animal in situ, and there are bound to be more that I don't know of. It seems like everyone is having a go at it. (My money is on Ku; he does have some tremendously expensive equipment down there, so the next piece of footage you probably see from him is GS IMAX (no, I don't know any secrets; I just know what backing and equipment he has.)

Congrats Ku!

 

[Tintenfisch]

The 11 ½-foot long giant squid was not the largest ever recorded. That record belongs to a specimen found in 1887 that measured 60 feet from end to end; that's as tall as the average six-story building.

Thank goodness they brought up that measurement again.