The Myth Of The Rare Giant Squid. We Were Looking Wrong

The heaviest squid on Earth was named in 1925. Nobody saw one alive in its own habitat until a hundred years later. Another giant of the deep, the bigfin squid, is caught about once every eight years. And seen alive on camera more than once a year. So are the biggest squid in the ocean rare? Or were we looking the wrong way?    / @planetbelow   More from the deep: ▸ The whale that finds these squid in total darkness. Everything strange about it comes from one problem →    • Why We Can't Explain Sperm Whales   ▸ A nautilus shell implodes at 785 metres. An octopus was filmed at 6,957. Same family →    • The 500-Million-Year Mistake That Created ...   ▸ As long as a blue whale, 95 % water, and it falls apart the moment anyone tries to catch it →    • The Longest Animal On Earth Is Not An Animal   Every fact in this film comes from published research. Key sources: Jamieson et al., Mar. Biol., 2026 · Jamieson & Vecchione, Mar. Biol., 2021 · Osterhage et al., PLOS ONE, 2020 · Kubodera & Mori, Proc. R. Soc. B, 2005 · Kubodera, Koyama & Mori, Proc. R. Soc. B, 2007 · Paxton, J. Zool., 2016 · Remeslo et al., Deep-Sea Res. I, 2019 · Robinson et al., Deep-Sea Res. I, 2021 · Widder et al., Deep-Sea Res. I, 2005 · Nilsson et al., Curr. Biol., 2012 · Schmitz et al., BMC Evol. Biol., 2013 · Nilsson et al., BMC Evol. Biol., 2013 · Winkelmann et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, 2013 · Grist & Jackson, Rev. Fish Biol. Fish., 2007. 00:00 Forty-six sightings 01:28 Not a slow drifter 03:03 Three names 05:38 The famous 18 metres 07:28 What whale stomachs know 09:34 Why nets and robots miss them 11:31 What the hidden camera saw 14:19 The eyes 16:36 So, is it rare? 18:34 Back to the bigfin squid ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FOOTAGE AND IMAGES CC BY 3.0, via YouTube — Ocean Exploration Trust / Nautilus Live · Dive Wise · Alexey Semenov · Li-Kai "Tom" Yen · NOAA Sanctuaries. CC BY 3.0 — Blagoj Klincharski (Ross Island, Antarctica), via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0 — Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (colossal squid M.190318, M.277964) · Auckland War Memorial Museum (giant squid), via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0 — NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet · Smithsonian NMNH / EOL · NOAA Photo Library (NOAA OER / 2015 Hohonu Moana), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain / CC0 — NOAA Ocean Exploration (incl. NCEI video portal, EX1605 Marianas 2016), NOAA Fisheries, NOAA Sanctuaries · Richard E. Young (beaks) · "Down to the Sea in Ships" (1922) and 19th-century plates and engravings, via Wikimedia Commons.