spizza Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 Giant squid caught on camera September 28, 2005 - 9:53AM Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format An image released the Royal Society shows the first photographs of a live giant squid in its natural environment, taken by Japanese scientists in the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Reuters 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 Verne's 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 were snagged on a longline 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. 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. Advertisement AdvertisementIn 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 of London 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 to 15 kilomtres south-east of Chichijima Island. By attaching depth loggers to the whales, the watchers found the creatures made enormous dives of up to 1000 metres 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 9.15am on September 30, 2004, squids as we know them changed forever. At that moment, 900 metres down in the stygian gloom, an eight-metre squid 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 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.
OneLastCast Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 (edited) A 4 hour battle with a giant squid - what a fight! However it was just attached to a float... Link to the article: SMH Giant Squid How long until someone lands one of these? What is the biggest squid ever landed using rod and reel? IGFA records? Cheers Edited September 28, 2005 by OneLastCast
Martin Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 I don't think IGFA recognise squid as a gamefish
Sharky Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 Now that would make some awsome calamri rings
LEELEE Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 Imagine the size of the kingy that would eat that live squid
Jewhunter Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 Thats' an awful lot of Jew bait Spizza!!!
Sharky Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 Thats awsome just think of some of the practicle jokes you could play on people if you took one home
Jethro Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 Awesome!!! Oh how the tables have turned. Soon you will be reading reports of people using a 20kg king as a livie to catch squid
phild Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 What would you make the jig out of? Rio bars? Train tracks perhaps.
harry.dz Posted September 28, 2005 Posted September 28, 2005 I actully have a documentary on sguid fishing in south america. This pros hand line sguid about 1.5/2.0 meters long. They also show that they also eat each other when one was been pulled up. Scarry little bliters. hazza
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