For the first time ever, we finally have video footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat, deep in the ocean’s abyss. The footage, which will air on a future Discovery Channel special, was captured by a film crew approximately 3,000 feet down in the Northern Pacific Ocean.
According to Richard Ellis, author of The Search for the Giant Squid, “It’s an exciting, exciting discovery.”
“We can learn how this thing moves, how it swims, what it does with its arms when it swims… Because it’s the first time anybody has ever seen one alive, it is an enormous breakthrough for science — and for mythology, of all things — because for a long time people didn’t even think they existed.”
I think this is great news for the field of cryptozoology, since here is a perfect example of something that has been described in sightings and legends like that of the Kraken (a giant tentacled sea monster); for centuries people dismissed it as fantasy, but yet modern scientists, who took great steps to seek out the creature, actually succeeded in proving and documenting its existence.
Here’s the CNN interview with Richard Ellis, unfortunately they don’t show any of the actual footage of the giant squid, just a few stills (I guess we’ll have to wait for that Discovery Channel special):
SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/world/2013/01/08/exp-early-ellis-giant-squid.cnn