More On the Fluorescing Squid

The film captured the squid in action: 1. The squid swims towards the bait; 2. It spreads its arms wide; 3. It swims around the bait, twisting its body; 4. It grabs the bait with its eight arms.

Colossal Squid Lights Up the Deep Sea !!

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News



The squid wasn't as sluggish as was first thought
The squid in action
Big deep-sea squid emit blinding flashes of light as they attack their prey, research shows.
Taningia danae 's spectacular light show was revealed in video footage taken in deep waters off Chichijima Island in the North Pacific.

Japanese scientists believe the creatures use the bright flashes to disorientate potential victims.

Writing in a Royal Society journal, they say the squid are far from the sluggish, inactive beasts once thought.

In fact, the footage, taken in 2005 - the first time T. danae had been captured on camera in their natural environment - reveals them to be aggressive predators.

The squid, which can measure over 2m (7ft) in length, deftly swim backwards and forwards by flapping their large, muscular fins. They are able to alter their direction rapidly by bending their flexible bodies.

The films, taken at depths of 240m to 940m (790 to 3,080ft), also show the cephalopods reaching speeds of up to 2.5m (8ft) per second as they attack the bait, capturing it with their eight tentacles.

Blinding flashes

However, the intense pulses of light that accompanied the ferocious attacks surprised the research team.

Dr Tsunemi Kubodera from the National Science Museum in Tokyo, who led the research, told the BBC News website: "No-one had ever seen such bioluminescence behaviour during hunting of deep-sea large squid."

The footage reveals the creatures emitting short flashes from light-producing organs, called photophores, on their arms.


Writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team said: "[The bioluminescence] might act as a blinding flash for prey."

The light would disorientate the squid's intended prey, disrupting their defences, they added.

It could also act, the scientists commented, "as a means of illumination and measuring target distance in an otherwise dark environment."

However, further investigation revealed the light bursts may also serve another, quite different, purpose away from the hunting field - courtship.

As the squid drifted around torches that had been attached to the bait rig, they emanated long and short pulses of light.

The team believe the torch lights may have resembled another glowing T. danae , and the squid were possibly emitting light as courtship behaviour.

Difficult subjects


SIZE COMPARISON

Deep-sea squid - once thought to be legendary monsters of the sea - are notoriously difficult to study, and little is known about their ecology and biology. Several species prowl the ocean depths.

T. danae is thought to be abundant in the tropical and subtropical oceans of the world. The largest reported measured 2.3m (7.5ft) in length and weighed nearly 61.4kg (134.5lbs).

Larger species of giant squid belong to the Architeuthidae family: females are thought to measure up to 13m (43ft) in length.

But the aptly named colossal squid ( Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni ) is thought to be the largest of all - possibly reaching up to 14m (46ft) long.

Architeuthis - The Kraken - Giant Squid, even !! - - found

Formally called Architeuthis, the giant squid can grow up to 60 feet in length. Little was known until recently about the creature that inspired the myth of the "kraken," a tentacled monster blamed for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

"Nobody has ever seen a live giant squid except fishermen," said team leader Tsunemi Kubodera of Japan's National Science Museum. The giant squid was caught on a baited hook laid 2,150 feet under the sea. Scientists captured it off the Ogasawara Islands, near Tokyo, on Dec. 4.

From: TOKYO (22 Dec. 2006) -- Its mass of reddish tentacles flailing, a giant squid fought a losing battle to evade capture in a video unveiled by Japanese scientists on Friday.Images of the squid -- a relatively small female about 12 feet long and weighing 110 pounds -- were the ultimate prize for zoologists at the National Science Museum, who have been pursuing one of the ocean's most mysterious creatures for years.Team leader Tsunemi Kubodera of the museum's zoology department said in an interview on Friday, "We believe these are the first ever moving pictures of a giant squid."The Japanese research team tracked giant squid by following their biggest predators -- sperm whales -- as they gathered to feed near the Ogasawara islands, 620 miles south of Tokyo between September and December.They succeeded in taking the first still photographs of a living giant squid in 2005, observing that it moved around in the water more actively than previously thought, and captured food by entangling prey in its powerful tentacles. The latest specimen, whose formalin-preserved carcass was displayed at a news conference at the museum in Tokyo, was caught on a baited hook laid 2,150 ft under the sea off the Ogasawara islands, on December 4, the scientists said.A squid about 22 inches in length had been attracted by the bait and the giant squid was hooked when it tried to eat the smaller squid, the scientists said.12/22/06 03:40 ET

Video Here.

Amazing squid.

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