Researchers aboard the New Zealand-based National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) research vessel Tangaroa were on an expedition to examine hoki, New Zealand's most valuable commercial fish, in Chatham Rise, an area from the ocean floor to the east of New Zealand which is part of the "lost continent" of Zealandia.
Although giant squid are very rare, they can be found all over the world, from Japan to the Gulf of Mexico, most of the time they seem to arise in New Zealand waters.
"New Zealand is kind of the giant squid capital of the world ," Stevens said in a statement.
The super squid
Scientists were raising their trawl from a depth of 442 meters when they were surprised to see tentacles among their catches. Large tentacles. It was a squid 4 meters long and 110 kilos in weight. With eight arms and two long tentacles with sharp tips, often twice as long as the rest of the squid, and two giant eyes (the largest in the animal kingdom at 25 centimeters.
Aside from the serendipitous find of the squid, Jérôme Mallefet from UCLouvain, Belgium, the world's leading expert on bioluminescent sharks, was determined to capture and photograph glow-in-the-dark sharks. So it was. He photographed the southern lantern shark, lucifer dogfish, and seal shark, which all emit blue light (although some sharks emit green), since shorter wavelengths travel well through deep water.
