From centuries-old maritime lore to more recent depictions in literature and film, the giant squid looms in our imaginations as a monster of epic proportions. These squids can be more than 40 feet long, with eyes the size of pie dishes and sharp, bird-like beaks that shred their prey.
Even into the 21st century, few people had seen one alive. But in 2019, Nathan Robinson, an independent researcher based in Valencia, Spain, spotted the fabled animal in the Gulf of Mexico while reviewing footage from a camera designed for sneakily observing deep-sea cephalopods like octopuses and squids. “Based on size alone,” he says, “what we were seeing could only really be one thing.”
Rare Giant Squid Video
The footage, which revealed surprising information about the squid’s behavior, is the latest to surface from a covert camera system that first recorded the giant squid in deep waters off the coast of Japan in 2012 — and has since captured footage of at least two additional species of elusive deep-sea squids.
