Men really need sea monsters in their personal oceans
September 30, 2005 @ 6:01 amSo said John Steinbeck (via Gilly via Susan, wording confirmed using Google Print).
By now, everyone knows that researchers in Japan were able to record images of a GIANT squid (Architeuthis).
In response, I traveled to Monterey, CA to interview the acclaimed squid researcher William Gilly. He studies Humboldt (JUMBO) squid, which look like this:
And I was scooped by Science Magazine:
“We are only left with a glimpse of the monster, and more questions than before,” such as which aspects of the apparatus actually attracted the squid, says William Gilly, a marine biologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Still, he says, the video provides “far more than what was known previously, which was zero.”
Turns out that the Science freelancer used this new fangled email process instead of getting stuck in traffic because of an unexplained fire on Highway 101 near Gilroy.
Over dogs and wine, in celebration of the approval of my degrees, the details of the story were revealed:
(1) Really cool, previously all we knew was based on dead GIANT squid washing to shore.
(2) Extra cool because the researchers were able to see something with a relatively cheap, low tech rig, where others have failed with fancy-schmancy equipment.
(3) The ‘video’ is actually just a series of images.
(4) Appears the rig was successful once in the last year.
(5) At 8m, the GIANT squid is about the same size as a large JUMBO squid (which are, population-wise, smaller).
