Mysterious giant squid off Auckland coast stumps experts

Wednesday, 27 May 2015

A huge squid has been hooked by a fisherman off the Auckland coast.

But exactly what the creature of the deep was remains a mystery.

A group of fishermen were fishing earlier in May off Manukau Harbour on a boat owned by Aucklander Peter Jackson when one of them snared the unlikely catch.

Hunting for swordfish, Jackson and his friend 'Noodle' initially thought they had struck it lucky.

'We had a bite and thought it was a sword[fish] but it grabbed and bit and took off with it, then it dropped it but came back several times. They're pretty powerful beasts,' Jackson said.

The line eventually went limp after about 15 minutes, with the catch exhausted, but when it arrived at the surface 'everyone's jaws dropped'.

'We saw the colour of it and then thought holy s***, it's a squid.'

It was hard to tell how big the squid was, but its mantle looked more than 2m long and 1m across, he said.

Not long after it arrived at the surface, the hook tore free from the creature's tentacle and it disappeared below the waves.

Jackson, who was a pioneer of big game fishing in the region and had been fishing in the area for more than 20 years, said he had seen a couple of big squid dead but never a live one.

'A few times on the East Coast I've seen them dead, all chewed up by whales or whatever.

'But to see the jaws snapping around and the tentacles moving, it's quite a rare thing…it's the stuff of folklore really.'

AUT marine biologist Dr Kat Bolstad, who helped dissect a giant squid last year, said from the pictures it appeared the creature was neither a giant nor a colossal squid.

The fins were not the same as a giant squid and colossal squid were not found this far north, living in Antarctic waters only.

There were several other species that it could be, such as the Octopoteuthidae—Taningia danae characterised by its light organs and hooks or Mastigoteuthidae – Idioteuthis cordiformis, which was known to eat sharks.

Whatever it was, it was a very unusual sighting to see at the surface, Bolstad said.