Giant Squid Caught On Video

[mrmoshe]

Giant squid caught on video

ITS mass of reddish tentacles flailing, a giant squid fought a losing battle to evade capture in a video unveiled by Japanese scientists today.

Images of the squid – a relatively small female about 3.5m long and weighing 50kg were the ultimate prize for zoologists at the National Science Museum, who have been pursuing one of the ocean's most mysterious creatures for years.

"Nobody has ever seen a live giant squid except fishermen," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera of the museum's zoology department said in an interview today. "We believe these are the first ever moving pictures of a giant squid."

Little was known until recently about the creature thought to have inspired the myth of the "kraken", a tentacled monster that was blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

Unconfirmed reports say giant squid can grow up to 20m long, but according to scientists they are unlikely to pose a threat to ships because they spend their lives hundreds of metres under the sea.

The Japanese research team tracked giant squid by following their biggest predators – sperm whales – as they gathered to feed near the Ogasawara islands, 1000km south of Tokyo between September and December.

They succeeded in taking the first still photographs of a living giant squid in 2005, observing that it moved around in the water more actively than previously thought, and captured food by entangling prey in its powerful tentacles.

The latest specimen, whose formalin-preserved carcass was displayed at a news conference at the museum in Tokyo, was caught on a baited hook laid 650m under the sea off the Ogasawara islands, on December 4, the scientists said.

A squid about 55cm in length had been attracted by the bait and the giant squid was hooked when it tried to eat the smaller squid, the scientists said.

Edited December 22, 2006 by MallacootaPete

[mrmoshe]

Here is the video of that big squid caught off Japan yesterday.

Not as big as I first thought, but I'd like to see the kingy that would take it as bait!

http://www.kamera.com/content/anm/Japan_Squid.asx

Cheers,

Pete.

[Frantic]

Hey check the size if those calamari rings