Colossal Squid Revives Legends of Sea Monsters

I remember a post a couple of months ago about a giant squid attacking a boat. Is something possibly causing these animals to become more aggressive?

Last month fishermen in the icy Ross Sea encountered a deep-sea giant. Almost 20 feet (6 meters) long, with spiked tentacles and huge, protruding eyes, it was feeding on Patagonian toothfish caught on longlines set by the fishermen. The creature was hauled aboard and taken to New Zealand for analysis. This confirmed the encounter as the first live sighting of a colossal squid.

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I seem to remember a story about a naval ship torpedoed off the coast of Australia: survivors were clinging to the side of a life raft for several days.

The crew noticed that several sharks were circling the life raft, which obviously caused a good level of aprehension. But then, the sharks disappeared. At least one man was pulled overboard, and never seen again. Another was grabbed, but his comrades pulled him back onboard: his legs were covered in strange circular wounds about the diameter of a coffee cup.

When they were finally rescued, and this victim ended up in a hospital, they found that small teeth were embedded around the circumfrence of each wound, and were found to be identicle to those found in sucker cups of squid.

Wow, your really think their is such a thing as sea monsters. Or is it just that they've always been there and we cared, but nevered worried to much about it.

Actually there is a good deal of evidence to support giant squids. There is no physical reason they cannot survive, and we have had numerous accounts of them actually being caught (as in the above article).

I would actually love to see one first hand.

These creatures definitly exist, we have only mapped and studyed a tiny portion of the worlds oceans, sure we have maps reveling the trenches and stuff but i mean indepth anaylsis, the stroies of 100 foot kraken maybe legend now but with the finding of a BABY Colosial squid that was 20 ft long how could you doubt it, ok this isnt scientific but think of it this way since we have no real data on there growth patterns, a human baby is about 1 1/2 feet at birth and on average we grow to 5'8 to 5'10 thats 4 times the size, so if a baby squid is 20feet an adult could possibly be 80 feet and in some cases 100 feet plus, there real i have no doubt what so ever

SHOOT! The photo wouldn't load properly, if you use the link, you'll see it. If this is an immature female, I wouldn't want to meet her parents!

The latest specimen, an immature female Dr O'Shea was examining in Wellington yesterday, was caught while attacking Antarctic toothfish being winched on board a New Zealand fishing boat. The squid is unique for sharp swivelling hooks with the suckers on its tentacles.

"This squid is a really nasty aggressive sort of squid ... a gelatinous blob with seriously evil arms on it," Dr O'Shea said. "If you were to fall into the water down there in the Antarctic, if the cold didn't get you first, something like this could devour you in seconds."

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I have posted before on Project BrightEye, which is a satelite based variable wavelength blue-green laser, designed specifically to penetrate deep ocean water to detect and communicate with underwater submarines, as well as for surviellance uses.

Although I seriously doubt that the DoD would ever let this kind of research be done (they dont even admit to the existance of BrightEye), but that is the perfect tool to search the depths of the uncharted oceans.

BrightEye is already used for essentially taking flash photos of high value targets through inclement weather conditions. I would believe it to be possible to retask it to take flash photos of the deep sea and find all kinds of large life forms that we had no previous idea existed.

Of course, ONI may well have such information stored under top secret clearances, gathered accidentally during tests or even operationally, if any happened to be near a target sub.

Very interesting notion...

on an interesting side note.. I has been proven that giant squid have the largest eyes on earth...Amazing the trivia you find on the net! hehe

Chris

Whats just amazing is that we have only explored 5% of the ocean and 0.2% of the ocean floor. I cant even begin to imagine what the hell else is down there. There have to be millions of species of ocean life we dont know about.

Yeah, the ocen floors are really amazing places. The TV series called "Blue Planet" had one episode about ocean floors. The sea life that was filmed was really incredible. We've all seen those really cool electric animals, but this program showed much more - even deep sea worms and really odd looking fish.

I also think it's amazing that this giant squid lived in Antartic waters, for some reason, I would have thought it might prefer warmer waters.

Yeah I remember that. They were all so bright and vivid. They all were lit up and luminious, it was like a vision of an alien planet.

It's amazing how little we do not know about our planet.
I would like to explore and find out what other creatures may be down there.

Like Journey to the Center of the Earth, with giant mushrooms and... ummm... well I forgot most of it... but there was giant stuff! I bet we'll find stuff twice as big as the largest animal known today, they could just be too heavy to float up when they die... or it's so deep they decay before they reach the surface, oooo