Live Giant Squid Filmed In The Pacific For The First Time

Live Giant Squid Filmed In The Pacific For The First Time


This amazing sea creature is an Architeuthis. Or a Kraken, as the ancient vikings used to call it. We knew the kraken wasn’t a mythical creature. Giant calamaris like this have been captured in the past, usually near the sea’s surface, but this is the first time it has been filmed alive in the wild, majestically swimming at 630 metres underwater.

Its silver skin glimmering in the dark under the submersible’s lights, looking suspiciously at the sub with its giant black eyes, the sea monster was amazing, according to Tsunemi Kubodera, the mission leader:

It was shining and so beautiful. 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.

The giant calamari was found in the depths of the Pacific Ocean by a team of three Japanese scientists crammed inside a research submarine for 400 hours and 100 missions. The team located the calamari 9.3 miles (15 kilometres) east of Chichi Island, a small archipelago about 150 miles (241.4 kilometers) north of Iwo Jima.

Kubodera was able to find another giant calamari in the past, but that was not an Architeuthis but a Taningia danae. The Taningia — a red beast with eight arms — is quite smaller than the Architeuthis. There’s another monster that hasn’t been filmed yet, even bigger than the Architeuthis: the Mesonychoteuthis.

The video, filmed in high definition, will be presented by the Discovery Channel soon, as part of its Curiosity TV show.


Architeuthis show to approximate scale next to the Shinkai 6500, a famous 9.4m long Japanese manned research submersible.

Size comparison.

[El País — In Spanish]


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