NEWSLINE PAPER,- Nearly 1 km below the surface of the ocean, cameras catch a scary deep-sea squid.
The "Taningia danae" deep-sea squid, which is also called the "Dana octopus squid," has been seen about 1 km below the surface. The video was taken by hooked cameras used by researchers from the University of Western Australia (UWA) and Kelpie Geosciences in the UK.
Jess Kolbusz, a researcher at the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, says the squid was seen in the South Pacific, north of the Samoa Passage. The length was estimated by Kolbusz and her team to be about 75 cm.
The Samoa Passage is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, close to the islands of American Samoa and Samoa. They put baited cams on the ocean floor north of this area to attract marine life and find new species that live deep in the sea.
Professor Heather Stewart of UWA and a member of Kelpie Geosciences said that the squid thought the camera was food and tried to scare it off with "lights" from its limbs.
It lives about 1.2 km below the ocean's surface and is one of the biggest kinds of deep-sea squid. Fish and smaller squid are some of the sea creatures it eats. It also eats bigger hunters like sperm whales.
This species is known for having two big photophores on the ends of its arms. Each one is about the size of a lemon. These photophores make bright bioluminescent flashes that confuse prey, make contact easier, and draw in mates.
Researchers think this is both an exciting and rare find, since this squid is rarely seen in the wild. In the past, most of the records came from bodies that were found on beaches, bycatch, or whales' stomach contents.
Source : News Week