Architeuthis

Thursday 09/29/2005 10:44 PM

They did it.

100 years ago, the giant squid was a creature of myth. The Kraken. Perhaps even the Scylla. A true leviathan none-the-less.

By the 70's, most scientists grudgingly accepted the fact that giant squid probably existed even though no living specimens had been observed (though plenty of carcasses have been washing up on shores and caught in nets for decades). My favorite story is about the scientist who spent some time on a whaling ship and discovered a plethora of huge squid beaks (the only undigestable part of the cephalopod) in the cut open stomachs of sperm whales, considered by most the mortal enemy of the giant squid. The clincher was a few years ago when Steve O'Shea captured giant squid larvae off the coast of New Zealand. Unfortunately, he was not able to figure out the right conditions to grow them and they all died in captivity.

But the credit goes to Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori who did it the old fashioned way: bait and tackle. They tied some big hooks together, got the right lure (ironically enough, other squid), mounted a camera to the whole contraption and went trolling at about 3,000 feet below sea level.

This was no fleeting glance of a shape way off in the dark. Imagine their surprise when a 28 foot monster took the bait and got snagged by their trap. They have more than four hours of footage of this thing trying to get free. It finally tore free from its caught tentacle (leaving the ultimate evidence: living tissue that has now been genetically confirmed to be architeuthis, i.e. the giant squid) and swam away into the briny depths.

Your Link of the Day is the official BBC news story.

I'm going to get all scientific for a moment, so don't freak out on me now, okay? The biggest argument against bigfoot or the loch ness monster existing is that in order for these creatures to keep on living, there has to be a big enough population to allow genetic diversity to minimize inbreeding, mutations and increase catastrophic survival (disease, natural disaster, etc.). If there are bigfeet (?) and loch ness monsters walking and swimming the earth, where do we look to find all of their buddies and parents and grandparents and kids and aunts and uncles hanging around doing whatever it is they do to keep the species going strong?

Well now that we have incontrovertible proof that giant squid are alive, the next question is how many are there? After a little bit of research on Google, I've discovered at least one source that gives us a number to consider: 500. Five hundred. There are probably at least 500 giant squid on the planet. Incredible, huh?

So what's next? More fishing I'm sure, and eventually they'll capture one live. I expect to live to see a giant squid it captivity somewhere in the world.

And after that, I figure they'll head down south to Antarctica and drop a line through the ice looking for mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the colossal squid that grows even bigger than the giant squid.

It's a great time to be a fisherman.

No, I'm not dead yet. It's nice to know which friends of mine are reading my blog on a regular basis, because they're the ones that send me messages like, "Hey! No posts in 4 days. You die or something?"

Still here, dear friends. Until next time.

Link of the Day: Live giant squid caught on camera

File Under: Cryptozoology; Link of the Day
Music: Bettye LaVette "I've Got My Own Hell To Raise"

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