Live giant squid caught on camera

[manta]

A live, adult giant squid has been caught on camera in the wild for the very first time.

Japanese researchers took pictures of the elusive creature hunting 900m down, enveloping its prey by coiling its tentacles into a ball.

The images show giant squid, known as Architeuthis , are more vigorous hunters than has been supposed.

The images, captured in the Pacific Ocean, appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

It was exciting to get a live Architeuthis tentacle. It was still functioning when we got it on the boat
Tsunemi Kubodera, National Science Museum
Documentary companies have invested millions of dollars trying to film adult giant squid in their natural environment. These efforts have met with little success - though one team has managed to capture a juvenile on film.

Japanese fishermen have taken snaps of an adult at the surface but, until now, no one had obtained images of the animal in its deep-sea hunting grounds.

Slippery customer

In their efforts to photograph the huge cephalopod, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori have been using a camera and depth recorder attached to a long-line, which they lower into the sea from their research vessel.

Below the camera, they suspend a weighted jig - a set of ganged hooks to snag the squid - along with a single Japanese common squid as bait and an odour lure consisting of chopped-up shrimps.

At 0915 local time on 30 September 2004, they struck lucky. At a depth close to 1km in waters off Japan's Ogasawara Islands, an 8m-long Architeuthis wrapped its long tentacles around the bait, snagging one of them on the jig.

Kubodera and Mori took more than 550 images of the giant squid as it made repeated attempts to detach itself.

The pictures show the squid spreading its arms, enveloping the long-line and swimming away in its efforts to struggle free.

Finally, four hours and 13 minutes after it was first snagged, the attached tentacle broke off, allowing the squid to escape. The researchers retrieved a 5.5m portion with the line.

Severed appendage

"It was exciting to get a live Architeuthis tentacle. It was still functioning when we got it on the boat," Dr Kubodera told BBC News.

The large suckers repeatedly gripped the boat deck - and Dr Kubodera's fingers when he prodded the severed appendage.


TOTAL LENGTH COMPARISON
Scientists admit they know little about the largest of the squid
"The grip wasn't as strong as I expected; it felt sticky," he explained.

But while other researchers have suggested that Architeuthis is a rather sluggish creature, the images show it is in fact an energetic predator.

Dr Steve O'Shea, of the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, told the BBC News website that he was extremely pleased for the researchers.

Kubodera, he said, had "ever-so-quietly been working away in the background on this for a number of years".

And Dr O'Shea, a world renowned expert on giant squid, added: "From the point of view of the public, who believe this squid is the largest, the meanest, most aggressive squid that we have - it is hugely significant."

Trawling threat

The Auckland-based researcher said now that the squid had been caught on camera, researchers could focus on other, lesser known squid species and on conservation.

Bottom-trawling by fisheries is destroying squid egg masses on the seabed, Dr O'Shea claimed. Evidence for this comes from an efficient squid predator - the sperm whale.

"Five of the species of squid that were staple in the diet of the sperm whale are recognised in New Zealand as threatened solely as a consequence of the effects of deep-sea bottom-trawling."

"[Sperm whales] are returning from the Antarctic on their historic migratory route to one of the richest regions on Earth in terms of squid diversity. But the larder is bare and the poor things are washing up on the beaches here starved."

The giant squid is by no means the largest known. Several other species, including the colossal squid Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni , are thought to grow larger.

Story from BBC NEWS:
news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4288772.stm

Published: 2005/09/28 05:42:12 GMT

© BBC MMV


news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4288772.stm

And it's a shame that this didn't happen to catch what was going on in Argo's article....

[Argo]

It would seem as if these giant squid are quite dodgy characters..............


Peru drugs hidden in giant squid
Police display the drugs haul in Lima
Peru is the world's second largest producer of cocaine
Police in Peru have seized about 700kg of cocaine hidden in frozen giant squid bound for Mexico and the US.

The drugs - worth about $17.5m - were sealed in several layers of plastic and other wrapping material and covered in pepper to divert sniffer dogs.

Police arrested seven people in the operation which they began in August.

Peru is the world's second-biggest cocaine-producing nation after Colombia. Many of the drugs are sent to Mexico on their way to the US.

Police seized the drugs hidden in a container of 25 tons of giant squid about to leave Paita (Piura) for Mexico.

Interior Minister Javier Reategui said that police operations had uncovered a drug-trafficking organisation using a fish-exporting company.

Last year, police arrested a man and confiscated more than 180kg of cocaine at the airport of the capital, Lima.

A year earlier in a massive haul, they seized 1.76 tons of cocaine with a street value of more than $70m bound for the US and Europe via Mexico.

[Argo]

Sex trap for giant squid
A team of scientists from New Zealand is hoping to use sex to record the first ever images of a live giant squid

Scientists have so far had to piece together clues from dead specimens
Marine biologist Dr Steve O'Shea is leading the group hoping to lure the huge cephalopod into view by taking advantage of what he believes is an annual migration of the animals to a particular area in New Zealand waters.

He thinks the female giant squid - like its cousin the cuttlefish - may secrete a sexual scent to attract a mate.

"We want to have several cameras suspended in the water column - maybe triggered by some sort of acoustic signal - such that when any animal comes into the range of the camera, the camera turns on," Dr O'Shea told BBC World Service's Discovery programme.

X-rated

"Because the animals are migrating into New Zealand waters to breed, they are very randy," the Auckland University of Technology researcher said.

"The freezer bag at home - to my wife's disgust - is actually full of giant squid gonad samples. We're going to grind all of this up, and we're going to have this puree coming out from the camera, squirting into the water.

"Hopefully the male giant squid, absolutely driven into a frenzy, is going to come up and try to mate with the camera.

"This is the dream - we're going to get this sensational footage of the giant squid trying to do obscene things with the camera."

TV competition

There is great competition developing between researchers - backed by television companies - to catch the first giant squid on camera.

No giant squid - also known as Architeuthis dux - has ever been caught in its natural habitat - the great depths under the ocean - as it only ever comes to the surface when dead or dying.

Indeed, scientists know more about the dinosaurs than they do about the huge cephalopod.

Sperm whale, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Giant squid can make up to 40% of a sperm whale's diet
"They're far enough away for it to be another planet for us," said Australian marine biologist Mark Norman, from the Museum of Victoria.

"We're talking 500 metres to probably 1.5 kilometres deep - very dark, very cold, very high pressure - not a particularly easy place for us to go looking around."

No one has ever seen the squid hunting, feeding or mating. Scientists do not know with any certainty how long it lives or how fast it can swim, although the suspicion is that the giant squid is not a fast pursuit predator.

"It's likely that the giant squid is hanging midwater," Dr Norman said.

"They effectively use the chemicals out of their urine to make ammonia solution that they put in little pockets all through their muscles.

"That makes them float, because the ammonia is more buoyant than seawater."

This was a common feature among deep sea animals, Dr Norman said, because it could be two or three months between feeds and the squid had to expend as little energy as possible.

Hunter hunted

The giant squid consists of a head, the mantle - which is the main body, and houses the intestines of the animal - and eight arms, together with two tentacles with clubbed, toothed ends that are used to grasp large fish.

In total, it extends 18 metres and weighs a quarter of a tonne. But despite its size, the squid may itself sometimes be the prey.

"In certain parts of the world, they're probably making up to 30 or 40% of the diet of sperm whales," Martin Collins, a specialist in cephalopods at the British Antarctic Survey, said.

Giant squid found in Tasmania, AP
Australasia is where most giant squid have been found
This evidence has already inspired one filming technique.

"Sperm whales don't seem to have a problem finding them, and that idea is behind some of the technology film crews have tried," Dr Norman said.

"[The crews were] sticking cameras on the heads of whales and calling them SpermCams. When the lights came on, they hoped the cameras would catch the giant squid in the headlights.

"But all that seemed to happen was the sperm whales got enormously frustrated by these things suction-cupped on the sides of their heads."

Dr O'Shea hopes that if his method works, it will add substantially to our knowledge of these amazing creatures and how they mate.

Scientists were intrigued when they found the first ever mated female with her skin still intact. Along the length of the female's arms were small holes, beneath which were a number of worm-like sperm chords radiating outwards.

Male giant squid have been found to have a long, muscular thingy, which is unusual as the males of most other squid species use an arm to pass sperm packets from themselves to the female.

'Hypodermic thingy'

Scientists believe that the male squid literally injects his sperm into the female's skin during mating.

"The two of them mount beak to beak, so you've got arms and tentacles flying everywhere," Dr O'Shea said.

"The male is co-ordinating this enormous thingy, and he's implanting spermadaphores into the female's arms.

Giant squid caught in Scotland
Some giant squid have occasionally been caught by fishermen
"He uses the thingy like a plunger or a huge hypodermic needle, and he's physically stabbing the female's arms."

The females then store the sperm in their bodies until they are ready to lay eggs.

A huge mass of jelly and eggs are released from the mantle in amongst the female's arms - but no one really knows what happens from that point on.

"Either the skin starts rotting and the sperm gets exposed, or the sperm comes to the surface on hormonal cues, or the female may even physically open the skin up herself with her beak or her suckers," Dr Norman said.

"Somehow she gets the sperm to the eggs as she ejects a large gelatinous mass of jelly and eggs."

[Argo]

CLICK TO ENLARGE!!

A colossal squid has been caught in Antarctic waters, the first example of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni retrieved virtually intact from the surface of the ocean.

It really has to be one of the most frightening predators out there Dr Steve O'Shea
"All we knew prior to this specimen coming through was that this animal lived in the abyssal environment down in Antarctica," New Zealand squid expert and senior research fellow at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Steve O'Shea, told BBC News Online.

"Now we know that it is moving right through the water column, right up to the very surface and it grows to a spectacular size."

Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni was first identified in 1925 after two arms were recovered from a sperm whale's stomach.

There have only ever been six specimens of this squid recovered: five have come from the stomachs of sperm whales and the sixth was caught in a trawl net at a depth of 2,000 to 2,200 metres.

TOTAL LENGTH COMPARISON
Scientists admit they know little about the large squid
"It's been known since 1925, but no one really paid any attention to it," Dr O'Shea said.

"Now we can say that it attains a size larger than the giant squid. Giant squid is no longer the largest squid that's out there. We've got something that's even larger, and not just larger but an order of magnitude mener."

This squid has one of the largest beaks known of any squid and also has unique swivelling hooks on the clubs at the ends of its tentacles.

Bigger still

This combination allows it to attack fish as large as the Patagonian toothfish and probably to also attempt to maul sperm whales.

'Colossal' squid has a powerful beak

"When this animal was alive, it really has to be one of the most frightening predators out there. It's without parallel in the oceans," said Dr O'Shea, whose work is sponsored by Discovery Channel.

The specimen, which was caught in the past few weeks in the Ross Sea, has a mantle length of 2.5 metres. That is a larger mantle than any giant squid that Dr O'Shea has seen and this specimen is still immature, the NZ scientist believes.

"It's only half to two-thirds grown, so it grows up to four metres in mantle length." By comparison, the mantle of the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, is not known to attain more than 2.25 metres.

The squid researchers are calling Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni the "colossal squid".

The specimen is a sub-adult

"We'd like to give this animal the name colossal squid in order to have a common name for it as opposed to just the scientific name," said Kat Bolstad, research associate at Auckland University of Technology.

"We feel that colossal conveys both the size and the aggressiveness of the animal.

"This animal, armed as it is with the hooks and the beak that it has, not only is colossal in size but is going to be a phenomenal predator and something you are not going to want to meet in the water."
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"...............and something you are not going to want to meet in the water." TOO d**n RIGHT !!

[Sharki]

ahhh, you check the same sites as i do!!!! ;D ;D