First Time For Everything: Giant Squid Caught on Tape in Natural Habitat

For the first time a giant squid, or kraken, has been sighted in its natural habit. A film crew and team of researchers in Japan used a submerine to submerge on 100 missions and hundreds of feet, cruising around for about 400 hours before catching sight of the gigantic creature. What else is down in the sea (mermaids?) that we don’t know about?

Picture of the giant squid (screen grab from footage). (NHK/NEP/Discovery Channel in Tokyo)

“It was shining and so beautiful,” Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan’s National Science Museum who was part of the missions, told AFP. “I was so thrilled when I saw it first hand, but I was confident we would because we rigorously researched the areas we might find it, based on past data.”

“Researchers around the world have tried to film giant squid in their natural habitats, but all attempts were in vain before,” Kubodera said.

Picture of the giant squid (screen grab from footage). (NHK/NEP/Discovery Channel in Tokyo)

The full showing of events surrounding the mission are to be shown on Jan. 27th on the Discovery Channel. The show is called Monster Squid: The Giant is Real. 

This is the first time a giant squid has been spotted in their natural, deep in the sea habitat. But close to the surface Japanese researchers found a baby one back in 2006. 

The creature is unique in the world because it has remained almost unnoticed and unoverserved. Some of the creatures measure nearly 60 ft in length. They are thought to battle sperm whales in the deep sea, since some of the beaks of giant squid have been found in the whales’ stomachs.

Diagram of squid anatomy showing its eight arms. The two longer tentacles with clubbed ends are used to catchprey. Image courtesy: Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES)

Giant Squid Eye. (Smithsonian) 

These giant squid have other amazing features, such as having clear blue blood, having the world’s largest eyes, and being one of the few deep sea animals studied and “verified” by modern science as real, as opposed to “mythological” creatures like mermaids.

(Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Museum of Nature and Science of Japan/AP)

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