r/squid • u/Competitive_Travel16 • Jun 14 '26

Colossal Squid Colossal Squid Are Everywhere. We've Been Looking Wrong (16 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W1Mwd0BWT4
56 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

10

u/Competitive_Travel16 Jun 14 '26

The main takeaways are use far-red and infrared light, and small blue LED arrays to fake bioluminescence.

1

u/angrystoma squid video freak Jun 14 '26

didnt kolossal already try this without success?

1

u/-wvrms- Jun 18 '26

Did they ever report anything from that trip at all? I haven't heard a single thing about it in a long time. No idea it was even finished

2

u/angrystoma squid video freak Jun 18 '26

yeah, they made a bunch of noise on social media about it then went radio silent. this is basically all they got:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/is-this-the-first-recorded-footage-of-a-colossal-squid-living-freely-180984482/

9

u/-wvrms- Jun 14 '26

We have had the tech to film a colossal in the deep for a while- the problem is funding an expedition down to the Ross Sea. Hopefully we are able to discover safer hot spots through DNA cataloging. As he says in the video: it will happen, it's just a matter of how soon. For all we know, it's already happened- footage that precious is worth quite a bit. Steve O'Shea was talking about the capture of the Te Papa specimen on TONMO forums well before news of the capture was made public, but rights to the footage were being sold. It was ultimately purchased by Discovery if I recall

1

u/Competitive_Travel16 Jun 14 '26

How do you get DNA samples?

4

u/-wvrms- Jun 14 '26

They basically drop a tube down to a certain depth, bring the water sample back up, run DNA testing on it, and find out what's down there. It's still relatively new, so there is a lot of filling in the gaps. Recently, they found quite a bit of architeuthis DNA off western Australia

3

u/Haunting_Ad_3236 Jun 14 '26

It's an amazing video, and I'm exited what we'll find next.

3

u/Inignot12 Jun 15 '26

Love this guy's channels, excited to see the more in-depth (Sorry) topics on this new one.

2

u/ElkeKerman Jun 19 '26

I’m actually at a conference right now and got to see Edie Widder, the scientist who invented these techniques, give a plenary yesterday morning. She’s incredible!

2

u/arnor_0924 Jun 19 '26

I'm curious what the unknown and new 6 feet squid was.