Diving instructors reported that the 2.5-meter marine animal appeared weak and had slow movements. Although they are often seen off the coast of Japan, encounters with live giant squid are rare.
Two Japanese divers recently succeeded capture images of a rare encounter with a 2.5-meter-long giant squid, which swam off the western coast of the Japanese archipelago.
Yosuke Tanaka and his wife Miki, diving instructors in Toyooka, Hyogo department (west), were warned by a fishing tackle seller that he had seen the giant squid near the surface in a bay.
“A giant squid”
The couple, who described their encounter in a dive service blog, set off in search of the mollusk near a rocky shore, where there was plenty of seaweed: “It was there, a huge squid”, Tanaka explained.
“It didn’t have the agile movements of many fish and sea creatures. Its tentacles and fins were moving very slowly,” she said.
The squid appeared weak and some of its skin seemed to be coming off its body, the diver noted.
The size of the animal and its enormous eyes were surprising, and he acknowledged that he felt “terrified” because it had “very thick arms; if they caught me, he would not be able to escape ”.
Now a giant squid was caught on video by a diver at a beach in Toyoka city in Hyogo! ???? #giantSquid #Japan pic.twitter.com/JOTVq6T20A
— Being Kansai (@BeingKansai) January 11, 2023
After 30 minutes, the marine animal was lost to sight in the depths of the ocean. Giant squids are known to live in the waters near Japan and sometimes end up on its shores, but it is very rare to see them alive in the sea.
According to specialists, this 2.5-meter giant squid was relatively “small.” According to Jon Ablett, an expert on molluscs and cephalopods at the Natural History Museum in London, a giant squid can measure almost 12 meters.
“The colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, is thought to be as large as [incluso] greater in terms of mass and possibly also in length than that of the giant squid, although no one has found such a mature specimen,” Ablett told Newsweek.