Monday, February 26, 2007

Colossal Squid



New Zealand Fishermen Catch World's Largest Squid

At ~990 pounds, the colossal squid (mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) is a lot of calamari...

11 comments:

WomanHonorThyself said...

Yikes thats one big mama..lol

cube said...

woman: actually this one is a male & it will be preserved for future study. But just thinking about the sheer size of this thing swimming freely in the ocean is why I prefer to swim in pools ;-)

Raggedy said...

Wow! I would not want to swim near anything like that! Amazing. Thanks for sharing him with us.
Have a wonderful day!
*^_^
(=':'=) hugs
(")_ (")Š from
the Cool Raggedy one

Jamie Dawn said...

Pass me some sauce. I'm ready to dip and chow down.

Rain said...

I have a question, why couldn't they release it back into the wild? Is that even possible with a squid? Sorry that is two questions =0)

Great post, thanks!

Jay Noel said...

Looks like a big butt with tentacles.

cube said...

j.d.: lol.

rain: It's size made it so rare a specimen that they decided to preserve it for study.

Caz said...

I've long been a huge (no pun intended) of the giant squid, so you can imagine that I was a little miffed by this upstart colossal squid.

Rain - the fishermen no doubt appreciated the significants of their entirely accidental catch, and labored for a couple of hours to put a net under it, and were then careful to preserve it in their big boat freezer. It must have been unwell, perhaps that's why it was on the surface? Given the rarity of these finds, especially an entire specimen, I say kudos to the fishermen for their actions and contribution to research.

Caz said...

... and yes, that should have read "significance" ...

cube said...

caz: The squid was happily munching on a large toothfish when it was spotted by the fishermen. I think it was just distracted by a juicy morsel of food.

Caz said...

You could be right Cube.

But it did puzzle me a tad: does the colossal squid chew, like, really slowly?