Thar’ Be a Kraken! First Video Footage of a Possible Colossal Squid in its Own Habitat Captured

credit – Matthew Mulrennan, Kolossal


Last year, a group of scientists attempting to capture footage of a colossal squid, the largest invertebrate on Earth, in its natural habitat may have hooked their prize when one of their underwater cameras captured a juvenile glass squid swimming by.

Colossal squids are members of the glass squid family, and so appear transparent to the eye—not that any eye has ever been laid on one in its day-to-day life. However, in the high-definition footage captured by the researchers, the vermillion tentacles and faint blue bioluminescence narrow down the list of potential species considerably.

In the epitomization of the phrase anti-climactic, the ‘colossal squid’ was a 12-centimeter-long juvenile, but because the expedition was privately funded, it gave the team immediate impotice to return to the Antarctic waters and search for longer, and at greater depths.

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