In March, Kat Bolstad returned from the Antarctic expedition, where she used a new camera system specially built to seek an elusive colossal squid.
No one recorded footage of one of these animals swimming in the deep sea. She didn’t notice one time on this trip.
On the day she left the ship, Dr. Bolstad, biologist Deep Sea Cefalopod, he learned of a recent video recorded on March 9 from the island of the southern sandwich. The Fa -diving team that sought a new marine life, in the Schmidt Ocean Institute Sub -Subsidbile, happened on a young head, and people wanted the help of Dr. Bolstada who identified it.
The minor was about 30 centimeters long (slightly less than the feet), with a transparent body, sensitive hands and brown stains. It was a colossal squid.
“Approximately as soon as I saw the recordings, I knew there was a good chance,” said Dr. Bolstad, a biologist of cephalopods at the Auckland Technology University in New Zealand. Remote is advised for Schmidt’s work of Antarctica.
It’s been 100 years since the colossal squid has been formally described in scientific work. In its adult form, the animal is larger than a giant squid, or any other invertebrates on Earth, and can grow up to 6 or 7 meters, or up to 23 feet.
The first good view of scientists to the type of 1925 was incomplete – only fragments of the hands from two squid in the abdomen of the sperm whale. Adults are thought to spend most of their time in the deep ocean.
The complete growing up of the colossal squid occasionally appears on the surface of the ocean, drawn to a fishing ship, while “chewing” is a hip, said Dr. Bolstad. The younger specimens appeared in the towing nets.
Still, so far, people have not witnessed a colossal squid at home, swimming in the deep Antarctic sea.
One of the reasons they are so elusive is the pure size of that home. In addition, the squid probably avoid us, said Dr. Bolstad. “They are very aware of their surroundings, because any interference in the water column around them can mean a predator.”
Sperm whales, the main squid predator, can dive up to two kilometers (1.25 miles). They may help them avoid whales, colossal squid developed the world’s biggest eyes – bigger than basketball.
They also have a “unique combination of boobs and hooks on their hands and tentacles,” said Dr. Bolstad, so she managed to confirm that a young sea creature in new shots was a colossal squid.
The shots were shot by a distance submarine called Subastian, which the Schmidt Ocean Institute used to explore the deep sea. This diving was a partnership with Ocean Census, an initiative to detect an unknown species. For a few minutes, the floody stopped in the descent to record a small, transparent cephalopod.
“I think it’s very exciting,” said Christine Huffard, a biologist at the Institute for Aquarium Research Monterey Bay, California, who was not involved in the expedition.
Dr. Huffard used other distance submarines in her research. She said these research missions have “huge value”. For example, her observation of octopus walking two -legged On the ocean bottom – using two hands for a walk, and the other six to camouflage as a cluster of algae or coconut – it happened by accident. The findings were useful to researchers of Mecca robotics, she said.
The recording of a rarely seen marine animal like a colossal squid, said Dr. Huffard, can also inform human activities such as a deep sea mining.
She said it would help know where these animals spend their time, where they travel to another or spawning, or for how long they live.
The young colossal squid in the video swam about 600 meters down, said Dr. Bolstad, not in deeper waters where adults probably dwell. Other deep sea squids spend their early life in shallow waters, she said. Have a transparent body, It can help the child swim undetected predators before descending as an opaque, reddish adult to a darker ocean.
The camera camera can detect squid – and immediately transfer the pictures. Unlike scientists a century ago, who had to dig in a partially digested massacre in Kit’s stomach, everyone could watch the Schmidt “diving stream” from home were part of the finding of a colossal squid, said Dr. Bolstad. “To be able to participate in these studies and discoveries, basically in real time, from any place on the planet – this is an amazing thing that people can do.”
He will continue to look for an animal in full adults. “I can’t wait to see what a living adult colossal squid looks like, at home in the deep sea where it belongs,” she said.
But she said that she was also glad that the first vision of species in the wild is not of an adult version-Greek Leviathan who holds hooks, but “this wonderful phase of an early life that looks like a little glass sculpture.”
“I actually love that this is our first sight of what will become a real giant,” said Dr. Bolstad.