Giant Squid Interpretation Centre

This list of giant squid specimens and sightings is a comprehensive timeline of recorded human encounters with members of the genus Architeuthis, popularly known as giant squid. It includes animals that were caught by fishermen, found washed ashore, recovered from sperm whales and other predatory species, as well as those reliably sighted at sea. The list also covers specimens incorrectly assigned to the genus Architeuthis in original descriptions or later publications. Tales of giant squid have been common among mariners since ancient times, but the animals were long considered mythical, and often associated with the kraken of Nordic legend . Scientific acceptance did not materialise until specimens became available to zoologists in the second half of the 19th century, beginning with the formal naming of Architeuthis dux by Japetus Steenstrup in 1857, from fragmentary Bahamian material collected two years earlier . The giant squid came to public prominence in 1861 when the French corvette Alecton encountered a live animal at the surface while navigating near Tenerife. A report of the incident filed by the ship's captain was almost certainly seen by Jules Verne and adapted by him for the description of the monstrous squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea . The giant squid's existence was established beyond doubt only in the 1870s, with the appearance of an extraordinary number of complete specimens—both dead and alive—in Newfoundland waters . These were meticulously documented in a series of papers by Yale zoologist Addison Emery Verrill . The earliest known photographs of the giant squid were of two of these Newfoundland specimens, both from 1873: first a single severed tentacle—hacked off a live animal as it attacked a fishing boat —and weeks later an intact animal in two parts ; the head and limbs of this latter specimen were famously shown draped over the sponge bath of Moses Harvey, a local clergyman, essayist, and amateur naturalist . Harvey secured and reported widely on both of these important specimens—as well as numerous others—and it was largely through his efforts that giant squid became known to North American and British zoologists . Recognition of Architeuthis as a real animal led to the reappraisal of earlier reports of gigantic tentacled sea creatures, with some of these subsequently being accepted as records of giant squid, the earliest stretching back to at least the 17th century . For a time in the late 19th century almost every major specimen of which material was saved was described as a new species. In all, some twenty species names were coined . However, there is no widely agreed basis for distinguishing between the named species, and both morphological and genetic data point to the existence of a single, globally distributed species, which according to the principle of priority must be known by the earliest available name: Architeuthis dux . It is not known why giant squid become stranded on shore, but it may be because the distribution of deep, cold water where they live is temporarily altered. Marine biologist and Architeuthis specialist Frederick Aldrich proposed that there may be a periodicity to the strandings around Newfoundland, and based on historical data suggested an average interval between mass strandings of some 30 years. Aldrich used this value to correctly predict a relatively small stranding event between 1964 and 1966 . Although strandings continue to occur sporadically throughout the world, few have been as frequent as those in Newfoundland in the late 19th century. A notable exception was a 15-month period between 2014 and 2015, during which an unprecedented 57 specimens were recorded from Japanese waters .Though the total number of recorded giant squid specimens now runs into the hundreds, the species remains notoriously elusive and little known. By the turn of the 21st century, the giant squid remained one of the few truly large extant megafauna to have never been photographed alive, either in the wild or in captivity. Marine writer and artist Richard Ellis described it as the most elusive image in natural history . Early attempts to capture a glimpse of the animal in its natural habitat included a submersible expedition by Frederick Aldrich in the late 1980s . A photograph purporting to show a live Architeuthis dux alongside a diver was published by Poppe & Goto , but this turned out to be a sick or dying Onykia robusta . A number of expeditions were mounted in the 1990s with the aim of capturing footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat , but all were unsuccessful. They included Smithsonian-backed expeditions to the Azores in July 1996 and to Kaikoura Canyon off New Zealand in January–March 1997 and February–March 1999 . These expeditions—the latter two each costing around $10 million—employed a combination of sperm whale-mounted crittercams, baited ropecams or drop-cams, an Odyssey IIB autonomous underwater vehicle, and the single-person submersible Deep Rover . All three were led by giant squid expert Clyde Roper, with the first two also involving marine biologist Malcolm Clarke and the last two Steve O'Shea of NIWA . A couple of years later, in 2001, O'Shea succeeded in capturing the first footage of a live giant squid when he caught and filmed several paralarval individuals in captivity . This milestone was followed by the first images of a live adult giant squid on 15 January 2002, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan . These were joined by a number of little-publicised photographs of live adults at the surface off Okinawa . Another unsuccessful attempt to film a live giant squid in the wild was made off the Spanish coast of Asturias in September 2002, led by Ángel Guerra . It was only on 30 September 2004 that a live giant squid was photographed in its natural deep-water habitat, off the Ogasawara Islands, by Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori . Kubodera and his team, again working off the Ogasawara Islands, subsequently became the first to film a live adult giant squid on 4 December 2006 . However, the quest to film a live giant squid in its natural habitat continued, with an unsuccessful National Geographic-backed attempt off the Azores in 2011, headed by camera expert Martin Dohrn and assisted by Clarke . The elusive footage was finally captured by a team comprising Kubodera, O'Shea and Edith Widder in July 2012 . Since then, live giant squid have been photographed and filmed at the surface on a number of occasions, mostly in Japanese waters , but also off Spain and South Africa .Despite these recent advances and the growing number of both specimens and recordings of live animals, the giant squid continues to occupy a unique place in the public imagination . As Roper et al. wrote: Few events in the natural world stimulate more excitement and curiosity among scientists and laymen alike than the discovery of a specimen of Architeuthis.
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