Giant secret of sea caught -- on film

[eric myers 2]

Last update: September 28, 2005 at 7:09 AM
Giant secret of sea caught -- on film
William J. Broad 
New York Times 
Published September 28, 2005 

For decades, scientists and sea explorers have mounted costly expeditions to hunt down and photograph the giant squid, a legendary monster with eyes the size of dinner plates and a nightmarish tangle of tentacles lined with long rows of sucker pads.

The goal has been to learn more about a bizarre creature of no little fame -- Jules Verne's attacked a submarine and Peter Benchley's ate children -- that in real life has stubbornly refused to give up its secrets.

While giant squid have been snagged in fishing nets and dead or dying ones have washed ashore, expeditions have repeatedly failed to photograph a live one in its natural habitat, the inky depths of the sea. But today two Japanese scientists, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori, report in a leading British biological journal, the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, that they have made the world's first observations of a giant squid in the wild.

Working about 600 miles south of Tokyo off the Bonin Islands, known in Japan as the Ogasawara Islands, they photographed the creature with a robotic camera at a depth of 3,000 feet. During a struggle lasting more than four hours, the 26-foot-long animal took the scientists' proffered bait, got entangled and eventually broke free, leaving behind an 18-foot length of tentacle.

The giant squid, the researchers conclude, "appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey." They said the tentacles could apparently coil into a ball, much as a python envelops its victims.

Scientists praised the discovery as a long-awaited breakthrough.

"This has been a mystery for a thousand years," said Richard Ellis, author of "Monsters of the Sea."Nobody knew what they looked like in the wild. We only saw them dead. These images will open the door to more detailed study of their life."

The squid hunters themselves are agog, and some perhaps a bit jealous.

"Wow!" said Emory Kristof, a photographer for National Geographic who twice ventured out in hopes of capturing giant squid on film. "It's always been presumptuous to say you're hunting the giant squid when we know so little. It's great that they got it."