nesherIt was a squid of colossal dimensions,
fully eight meters long. It was traveling
backward with tremendous speed
in the same direction as the Nautilus.
20000 Leagues Under the Seas, by Jules Verne
Remember amazing gook from your childhood, 2000 Leagues under the Seas, by Jules Verne? In chapter 17, The Devilfish, he describes the gigantic squid, the Sea Monster, which filled the nights of many kids with adventurous nightmares. One of the illustrations to the Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires shows the squid as follows:
And, now, we can be sure that it was not just a tale or a fiction. Gigantic Squids are as real, as you or me. Tsunemi Kubodera, a scientist with Japan’s National Science Museum, caught the 24-foot (7-meter) animal in December, 2006 near the island of Chichijima, some 600 miles southeast of Tokyo. His team snared the animal using a line baited with small squid and shot video of the russet-colored giant as it was hauled to the surface.
The squid, a young female, "put up quite a fight" as the team attempted to bring it aboard, Kudobera told the Associated Press, and the animal died from injuries sustained during the capture.
Giant squid, the world’s largest invertebrates, are thought to reach sizes up to 60 feet (18 meters), but because they live at such great ocean depths they have never been studied in the wild.
While it was the first case, when the squid was actually captured, the substantial evidence of their existence has been already obtained earlier. Many giant squid have washed up on beaches or have been found dead or dying in fishing nets. This specimen was found in New Zealand in 1996.
To conclude this publication, I want to present show MonsterQuest, and the episode "Giant Squid Found," which aired on the History Channel in 2007. A mammoth squid was filmed in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico at about 1,000 feet below the surface. The group of divers and researchers working on the project attached a camera to a smaller squid in hopes it would dive down deep enough to give them a glimpse of these Kraken-like sea creatures that many believe exist.
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