Japan: First-ever images of bus-sized giant squid - filmed underwater

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, the giant squid 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 squid 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 the giant squid 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.

First to film
Dr Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum in Tokyo and Dr Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association describe in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B how they found the squid, using sperm whales as a guide.

Sperm whales are the main predator of the giant squid.

Whale watchers on the Ogawara Islands, in the North Pacific, have long noted how sperm whales migrate.

In particular they have observed how the mammals would gather near a steep and canyoned continental shelf, about 10-15 kilometres southeast of Chichijima Island.

By attaching depth loggers to the whales, the watchers found the creatures made enormous dives of up to 1000 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.

In September 2004, 900 metres below sea level, an 8 metre specimen lunged at the lower bait bag, succeeding only in getting impaled on the hook.

For the next four hours, the squid tried to get off the hook as the camera snapped away every 30 seconds, gaining not only pictures but also information about how the squid propels 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 could still grip the boat deck and any fingers that touched them, testimony to the myths of yore, that spoke of monstrous arms that grabbed ships and hauled them to their doom.

The researchers have tested DNA 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 people think.

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.

Elusive squid
Scientists have gone to extreme lengths, backed by TV companies, to be the first to film giant squid.

In 1997 the US National Geographic Society attached video cameras by a temporary cord to sperm whales in the hope that this would get pictures of a whale dining on one of the giant cephalopods.

In 2003, New Zealand marine biologists laid a sex trap.

They ground up some squid gonads, believing that the scent would drive male giant squids wild as the creatures migrated through New Zealand waters.

The hope was that a camera would squirt out the pureed genitals and a passing squid, driven into a sexual frenzy, would then mate with the lens.

This was a project that, some may be relieved to hear, never came to fruition.

(Related video: Giant squid caught on film)

Source: abc.net.au and www.usatoday.com