Giant squid captured on film for the first time: Japanese film crew records elusive creature in its natural habitat

• Giant squid 10 feet long is filmed at a depth of a third of a mile
• Scientist leading the project describe it as a beautiful moment

By Lewis Smith

PUBLISHED: 17:02 GMT, 7 January 2013 | UPDATED: 17:36 GMT, 7 January 2013

Giant squid are the stuff of fiction but the monsters of the deep have at last been filmed in their natural habitat.

Thought to be the inspiration for the mythical Kraken which was reputed to drag ships and sailors to their doom, the giant squid has long fascinated naturalists and story-tellers.

A Japanese film crew has now managed to film the animal at a depth of a third of a mile beneath the waves, the first time it has been videoed in the deep water it inhabits.

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The 10-feet long giant squid was filmed in the northern Pacific Ocean in July last year.

Footage of the giant squid was captured when a three-man submersible team descended to a depth of 2,066 feet (630 metres) in the northern Pacific Ocean.

The crew spent 400 hours in the submersible and carried out 100 missions in a project to film the giant squid, the world’s largest invertebrate.

Once they located the animal, which was 10-feet long (3 metres), they were able to follow it down to 900m where it vanished into an ocean abyss.

Tsunemi Kubodera, of Japan’s National Science Museum, described finding the animal as a ‘shining and so beautiful’ moment.

He and scientific colleagues succeeded in filming the giant squid after teaming up with Japanese broadcaster NHK and the US Discovery Channel.

Giant squid, Architeuthis, are known to eat other squid and grenadier fish, and are themselves prey to sperm whales.

The submersible crew followed the squid down to a depth of 2,953 (900m).

Sucker injuries on the skin of whales, backed up by stomach contents, have hinted at bloody battles to the death between the two leviathans.

In 1965 a Societ whaler claimed to have witnessed a giant squid and a 40 tonne sperm whale locked in mortal combat.

The squid's head was reportedly found in its opponant's stomach but the whale didn't survive the encounter either as it was said to have been strangled by the tentacles wrapped in a fatal embrace around its throat.

Giant squid are thought to be the inspiration for the mythical kraken which could attack and sink ships.

A photograph of a giant squid was first taken in 1874 when the Reverend Moses Harvey, a Newfoundland amateur naturalist and writer, bought one for 410 after it was accidentally caught by a fisherman.

Bodies of giant squid have occasionally been found washed on shores but it had never been filmed  alive until 2004 when a handful of still photographs were taken.

Two years later Kubodera led a team that took the first moving footage of a live giant squid when they snared a 23-feet (7 m)  female using bait lowered from a research ship and hauled it up to the surface.

Eileen O’Neill, Group President of Discovery and TLC Networks, said: ‘This ground breaking project features the very first-ever footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat.’

Giant squid have been portrayed as fearsome monsters in literature but there are yet to be confirmed attacks on boats.

They are a type of cephalopod and, along with the colossus squid, have the largest known eyes in the animal kingdom.

The biggest specimen of giant squid on record is 43 feet (13m), according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Squid have eight arms and two longer feeding tentacles which are armed with suckers and sharp teeth which pull prey to its powerful beak which slices them up.

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