A Real Life Sea Monster...

LiquidSound

Ladies and Gentlemen..I present you with two of the first pictures ever of a giant squid, alive, in its natural habitat. This little fella clocks in at a meager 26 feet. While larger ones get up to about sixty... Enjoy.

KentVaughn

I've always been fascinated by those things. Where'd those pics come from?

Mike682

cool

marine life is amazing

LiquidSound

Throw a search on www.google.com and lots of sites will show up.

amulford

Way cool. They have been after a living specimen for years, but haven't had much success 'til now.

MacLeod

God thats amazing! Hard to imagine a squid 26' long!

Makes you wonder what else lurks in depths up to 7 miles deep! The ocean intrigues the hell out of me.

audiobliss

God's creation is amazing, isn't it?

Mazeroth

I saw a special on giant squids on Discovery HDTV about a year ago. They found a place in the ocean where baby giant squibs inhabited. It was pretty far off land if I remember. Anywho, they captured like eight of them, put them into a very large tank (thinking ~500 gallons) of the same water they were caught in, kept at the same temperature and all. After they got back to shore, they were all dead. Talk about insane. These babies were very small. Something like only a few inches.

LiquidSound

I'm a huge Discovery junkie, and I've seen many shows on the subject of giant squids. Most were just information, some were detailing actual attempts at finding these creatures in the wild. Up to this point, all had been fruitless. Not to mention very costly and disheartening. Did I mention the costly?..cause yeah, those expeditions weren't cheap.
And all it took was some cabling, bait on one end, camera on the other..viola! Amazing huh.
If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go trap bigfoot with some cheetos and a hot glue gun.

Danny Tse

I believe the record for a Giant Squid is 59 feet. :eek:

However, please check out the following article on BBC's website....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4288772.stm

The last paragraph mentioned....

The giant squid is by no means the largest known. Several other species, including the colossal squid Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, are thought to grow larger.

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Demiurge

All the more reason to stay the eff out of there.

Mazeroth

What I love is how we're going to spend something like 108 billion dollars flying to the moon, yet we have our own "another planet", the ocean, right here. Instead of putting that money into flying to the moon, can you imagine what we could learn about the ocean with that kind of loot?

LiquidSound

"All the more reason to stay the eff out of there."

I think my ex-coworker put it best.
"Man, I don't trust anything that doesn't have shoulders..."

LiquidSound

Well, let's just throw in a Carcharodon Megalodon and call it a nightmare..savvy?

Schris22

Quite fascinating...been watching so many of those discovery channel specials on the giant squid... very interesting, sperm whales or something of that nature eat them....fun to watch a battle. Friend showed me a video of a octopus killing sharks in a tank....daft ****!

Chris

spwuinmk67

That's amazing. I've been watching them try to find them for years as well. When I took Marine Bio for 3 years, I was hooked on them. It's about time. It's sad though that we know more about other planets, then our own. BTW, yes, it is sperm whales they fight with. And some of the attempts were off New Zeland. As far as the young squid dying, I personally feel, that it was cause they were used to the greater water pressure at that depth, and when they were brought up to the surface, that lack of pressure, is what killed them. Just my thoughts on that though...

MSkeezer

Incredible. I read about this yesterday on another site, and it's just fascinating. The ocean is a scary place. I used to swim in it all the time as a kid, but knowing what I know now, I don't think I'll ever set a foot in it again.

Danny Tse

I read something recently about battles between whales and squids....

Giant Squid have been seen in battle with adult whales too. In 1965, a Soviet whaler watched a battle between a squid and a 40 ton sperm whale. In this case neither were victorious. The strangled whale was found floating in the sea with the squid's tentacles wrapped around the whale's throat. The squid's severed head was found in the whale's stomach.

From http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/squid.htm

Pablo

I've always thought those were so cool. I just watched a special on them a couple of days after that story broke where they said "a live one has never been seen in it's natural habitat". There's also a decent one on discovery called "search for the giant squid" where they spent months down there and saw nothing. The ones that got the pictures actually spent a few month with the cable and camera before they got something.

(and if you're worried about one getting you, keep in mind those pictures are a couple of thousand feet down, and at 8lbs a gallon, a thousand feet of water gets kind of heavy, so you probably won't make it that deep).

wodom1

Pablo wrote:

(and if you're worried about one getting you, keep in mind those pictures are a couple of thousand feet down, and at 8lbs a gallon, a thousand feet of water gets kind of heavy, so you probably won't make it that deep).

Every 33', the atmosphere doubles, so at 2000', you'd feel 60 times the pressure on your body as you do at sea level. It's incredible that creatures can live with that much pressure on their bodies!

Pablo

I'm amazed things can handle that pressure. And most of them can come up without ill effects. I saw one deep sea show where they attached a Styrofoam coffee cup to the outside of a deep submersible (I think it was Alvin), and when they came up it was just a super miniature cup (totally intact with the same shape). It thought it was pretty funny.

Toxis

god's creation? oooooooooo k.

dohcmark8

MacLeod wrote:

Makes you wonder what else lurks in depths up to 7 miles deep! The ocean intrigues the hell out of me.

Just thinking about what else could be down there is scary... anyone here caught the new NBC show Surface?

swerve

I'll tell you what's down there...

more creepy **** we do not want to know about.
What if like... there was a special race of humans down there that walked the floor of the ocean and used mutant swordfish as their weapons?!
lolol

LiquidSound

I was thinking more along the lines of something that would bite you in the eye, because that's the fastest way to inject poison into your brain. Things do that in the big drink.
And you thought your neighborhood was bad.

swerve

well we could never get out down there anyways...

LiquidSound

You're right, we can't get down there really. That's ok, the eye biting, brain injecting critters also live at the surface.