You've Never Seen a Colossal Squid Like This

The colossal squid, an incredibly rare species native to Antarctic waters, can be longer than a pickup truck and weigh more than 1,000 pounds, making it the world's heaviest known invertebrate. But the first confirmed colossal squid recorded alive in its natural habitat is a fraction of that size, measuring just under a foot, per the BBC. The sighting of the juvenile colossal squid in the South Atlantic near the South Sandwich Islands in March is nonetheless exciting. Though first discovered a century ago in the stomach of a sperm whale, the colossal squid continues to "straddle the line between legend and reality" due to limited sightings, according to the Natural History Museum.

Dying colossal squids have been filmed close to the ocean surface or on fishing boats. But the species has never been officially recorded alive at depth. One may have appeared in deep ocean footage released last year, but it could not be conclusively identified, per the Washington Post. In the latest case, researchers were initially unsure what "beautiful and unusual" species they were looking at in footage recorded by a remote-controlled vehicle deployed from the Schmidt Ocean Institute's Falkor vessel, per the BBC. But the unique "combination of hooks and suckers" that can be seen prove it to be a colossal squid, Auckland University of Technology cephalopod expert Dr. Kathrin Bolstad tells the Post.

Observed to have iridescent eyes, a transparent body, eight orange arms, and two long tentacles, the juvenile was filmed almost 2,000 feet deep in what is believed to be its usual habitat. Adult colossal squids are thought to reside even deeper in the ocean. The footage—recorded as part of the Ocean Census project, which has identified more than 850 new marine species in the last two years—"shows how little we have seen of the magnificent inhabitants of the Southern Ocean," says Schmidt Ocean Institute executive director Jyotika Virmani. In footage from January, the project also captured the first ever footage of a glacial glass squid, per the BBC. (More colossal squid stories.)