Sept 28, 2005
Experts capture giant squid on film for first time
PARIS - 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 Vernes' 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 got
snagged on a long-line 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. And, given the problems of getting
down to its home in the ocean depths, no-one had ever obtained
pictures of a live one.
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 B, the Japanese experts 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 10-15 km south-east of Chichijima
Island.
By attaching depth loggers to the whales, the watchers found the
creatures made enormous dives of up to 1,000 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 9.15 am on September 30 2004, squids as we know them changed
forever.
At that moment, 900 metres down in the Stygian gloom, an
eight-metre specimen 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 behind 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.
The Japanese scientists 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. -- AP
