On March 9th, an international group of scientists and crew were on board Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel when they recorded footage of a colossal squid. The vessel was located near the South Sandwich islands in the South Atlantic ocean near the sea floor. This was the first time that a colossal squid had ever been caught on camera. 

The squid that was caught on camera only measured about a foot long, but colossal squids can grow up to 23 feet long and up to 1,000 pounds. Although the giant squid can grow longer, to about 43 feet, the colossal squid is much stockier and may get to 1,000 pounds while giant squids can only reach up to 600 pounds. 

These squid live in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, all around Antarctica. They usually stay in these waters, but young squid are sometimes found farther north, closer to the southern waters of Australia, South Africa and South America. They live in the depths of the ocean almost 2,000 meters down or 6,562 feet below the surface. 

Colossal squids have extremely large eye diameters reaching almost 30 centimeters, indicating that they are visual hunters even in the darkness. These squids have large tentacles with hooks on them and they use these to attack their prey, which is usually fish and squids. Although these squids are so large, they still have predators; they are usually hunted by sperm whales, but also by long finned pilot whales, southern elephant seals, southern bottle whales, albatross, and Patagonian tooth fish.

Although humans still have little knowledge on this species, its discovery is still very notable. Student Mia Milligan comments, “I read about the discovery of the colossal squid and I think it is so cool that they have discovered squids this large.” 

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of when colossal squids were first discovered. It also marks the first year that these invertebrates were officially seen on camera.

Another student who finds this discovery intriguing is Sam McCabe, and she says, “I can not believe that colossal squids are bigger than giant squids. I always thought of giant squids to be the biggest.” Although this species is extremely hard to study, it is so cool that it was finally recorded.