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Photos show giant squid

In this photo released by Dr. Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum, a 26-foot-long Architeuthis attacks a prey hung by a white rope, left, at 900 yards deep off the coast of Japan's Bonin islands in the fall of 2004. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Washington Post
In this photo released by Dr. Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum, a 26-foot-long Architeuthis attacks a prey hung by a white rope, left, at 900 yards deep off the coast of Japan's Bonin islands in the fall of 2004. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

WASHINGTON – Using a digital camera dangling from a line nearly 3,300 feet long, scientists for the first time have photographed a live giant squid, the tentacled deep-sea monster that is the largest invertebrate on Earth.

Researchers Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori, reporting in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said a giant squid about 26 feet long attacked and became ensnared on a baited jig, or lure, trailing below a marker buoy about 500 miles south of Tokyo, near the Ogasawara Islands in the Pacific.

The camera took 550 digital images over the next several hours while the squid tried repeatedly to free itself. It finally escaped but lost 18 feet of tentacle in the struggle. DNA analysis matched the tentacle with fragments taken from the remains of dead giant squid found over the years.

The giant squid has been famous in legend for 2,000 years and was immortalized by Jules Verne’s novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” but little is known about the elusive creature.

The squid’s broken tentacle was still functioning after it was hauled to the surface, researchers reported, “with the large suckers of the tentacle club repeatedly gripping the boat deck and any offered fingers.”