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A monster from the deep
A colossal squid with razor-sharp hooks on its tentacles and with eyes bigger than dinner plates, has been slowly defrosting at Wellington’s Te Papa Museum. Scientists from around the world gathered at the museum in late April and early May 2008 to study the biggest squid ever captured.
The colossal squid ( Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), dubbed the kraken after a legendary sea monster, was captured by fisherman in February 2007. The beast weighed 495 kilograms and took two hours to land in the Antarctic waters of the Ross Sea. The squid was snap frozen in fresh water and stored at the fishing company’s Timaru cool store, then it was gifted to Te Papa where it was stored in a giant walk-in freezer at the museum until now.
It is thought that colossal squid can grow up to 14 metres long and weigh up to 750 kg, when this specimen was caught fisherman estimated its length at 10 m. However, the squid’s tentacles have shrunk a lot as it defrosted and its final defrosted length was only 4.2 m. "The two long tentacles that the fishermen observed have shortened and shrunken considerably post mortem. - These are incredibly plastic animals, and dimensions obviously change considerably," museum worker Chris Paulin said on the museum's website.
A marine biologist, Dr Steve O'Shea, a squid expert at Auckland's University of Technology, was in Wellington to study the squid. He said the squid is a “really nasty aggressive sort of squid - a gelatinous blob with seriously evil arms on it. Without any doubt if you fell in the water, you could be shredded to bits by a colossal squid. It is the T Rex of the oceans.”
When the scientists finished examining the squid, technicians set about preserving the specimen in a formalin solution to stop it from going rotten. After three or four weeks "fixing" in the formalin, it will be put in a purpose-built tank and put on display at the museum by the end of the year.
The thawing and examination was filmed for the Discovery Channel for a documentary programme to screen worldwide in late 2008.
For more information about the colossal squid see the Te Papa
website
The site includes photos, a webcast of the examination and audio lectures.
