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A hulk squid stars in this still picture taken from a footage Edie Widder shot. It’s a first-ever video of these hulk squids, and it’ll entrance in a Discovery Channel documentary airing in late January.

Edie Widder/Discovery Channel

A hulk squid stars in this still picture taken from a footage Edie Widder shot. It’s a first-ever video of these hulk squids, and it’ll entrance in a Discovery Channel documentary airing in late January.

Edie Widder/Discovery Channel

For thousands of years, sailors have told stories of hulk squids. In parable and cinema, a kraken was a many terrible of sea monsters. Now, it’s been prisoner — on a soon-to-be-seen video.

Even after decades of searching, hulk squids had usually been seen in still photographs. Finally, in final July, scientists filmed a initial video of a live hulk squid swimming some 2,000 feet next a aspect of a Pacific Ocean.

Edie Widder is a sea researcher who shot a footage, that is slated to be expelled in a Discovery Channel documentary after this month.

She told Jacki Lyden, horde of weekends on All Things Considered, a fugitive quadruped could have been as many as 30 feet long. The largest squid on record, she said, was 55 feet long.

Interview Highlights

How Widder stalked a hulk squid

“I had been wanting for a prolonged time to try a sea in a opposite way, since I’ve always been endangered with how many things we contingency be scaring divided — a approach we go down with loud submersibles that have thrusters whirring and splendid lights on them. Any animal with any clarity is going to get divided from that. So we wanted to rise a cat-like system. And besides carrying a cat-like camera, we wanted to not usually put down attract a approach routinely people do to attract animals, since passed attract is usually going to attract scavengers. And so we wanted to attract active predators, so we grown an visual captivate that imitates a sold form of bio-luminescent arrangement that we suspicion should be appealing to vast predators.”

Despite a myths, scientists knew hulk squids existed

“The reason we know hulk squids exist is that they occur to boyant when they die. But we unequivocally [have] usually explored 5 percent of a ocean, and we consider we’ve explored that in a wrong way. we consider we’ve frightened a lot of animals away. So what about a things that doesn’t boyant when it dies?”

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A hulk squid is captivated to a “e-jellyfish,” a bioluminescent captivate invented by sea biologist Edie Widder.

Discovery Channel

A hulk squid is captivated to a “e-jellyfish,” a bioluminescent captivate invented by sea biologist Edie Widder.

Discovery Channel

On removing a money-shot of a camera-shy giant

“The footage we got was usually extraordinary to see… . The initial few times we saw it on camera was like it was doing a fan dance and usually arrangement us small pieces of itself. We’d see a arms kind of call by a camera. … But a many fantastic shot is when it came in on a conflict … it comes adult over a globe — that is a visual captivate that’s educational a bio-luminescent arrangement — and attacks a camera itself.”

On a squid’s startling appearance

“The tone was definitely opposite than any of us expected. The one that had been brought to a aspect and that there were cinema of was red, and a lot of deep-sea squid are red. But this was a fantastic china and gold. It usually looks like it was forged out of metal, it’s usually totally monumental and totally unexpected.”

On how it feels to be a initial to constraint video of a hulk squid

“The fad was incredible. It’s usually extraordinary to be means to have a impulse like that and comprehend you’ve finished something people have been perplexing to do for decades. That’s what got me into scholarship in a initial place — this event to try a new frontier. But we never, never illusory that I’d get an event like this.”