Men of the sea have always told stories that seems mythical and legendry in nature. Since the very first sailor went down to the sea in the ships, they always returned with the stories of seeing strange creatures. No doubt, they looked like fanciful tall tales dreamed up to amuse and entertain but for those who took them seriously chased them from one coast to another to make them known to the science.
A classic example of this is the Giant Squid, which was thought of as a creature of myth, legend or something that has gone extinct until in 1997, scientists discovered the corpse of the creature. In 2005, it was the first time I heard of a giant squid captured live on camera and that was the second time I was beside myself with excitement, first time was of course when Monica charged Bill Clinton for sexual molestation, followed by secret sex life of mysterious monsters of the deep, as some might call them.
Tsunemi Kubodera, a scientist with Japan’s National Science Museum, caught, oh... he killed, the 24-foot (7-meter) animal earlier this month near the island of Chichijima, some 600 miles (960 kilometers) southeast of Tokyo, while attempting to bring it aboard, the animal died from injuries sustained during the capture but here it should be noted it was not intentional.
But it looks like the giant female squid have given us clues before dying that giant squid are more plentiful than had been thought and the event could help open up more fruitful research into the poorly understood animal.
Kubodera said—
“Now that we know where to find them, we think we can be more successful at studying them in the future.”
Kubodera has spent three years searching for the creatures, and his team scored a coup in 2004 when it used a remote underwater camera to take the first-ever photographs of a live giant squid. 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.
Via: Nationalgeographic
