Kiwi scientists stunned after catching giant squid in NZ waters
Monday, 17 February 2020
Kiwi scientists have been left stunned and excited after unwittingly catching a giant squid.
Niwa scientists were surprised to find a giant squid caught in their fishing trawl net while out surveying hoki off Canterbury's east coast recently.
A statement from Niwa said the survey had taken place in January on the Chatham Rise.
When pulling in the trawl net, the scientists were surprised to spot huge tentacles among the fish in the net.
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Voyage leader and Niwa fisheries scientist Darren Stevens said it took six staff to lift the squid, which weighed about 110kg, onto a tarpaulin.
Stevens described the 4-metre-long squid as 'probably on the smallish side'.
He said the ship was abuzz with news of the squid and sleeping scientists were even roused to take photographs.
The squid was examined and dissected by Auckland University of Technology squid researcher Ryan Howard.
Nearly 50kg of samples of the squid were taken, including the eyes, head, stomach and reproductive organs.
'We managed to get an 110kg animal down to two 25kg boxes in terms of what was actually kept,' Stevens said.
'We took the stomach because virtually nothing is known about a giant squid's diet because every time people seem to catch one, there's very rarely anything in their stomachs.'
He said the eyes would be used for research and could even shed light on the secret lives of giant squid.
'Getting two giant squid eyes is apparently enough for a scientific paper. They're really rare, and you need a fresh one. So it was a really unique set of circumstances to get two fresh eyes.
'The life cycle of giant squid is another mystery. The statolith – a tiny bone structure in the head – will be used to estimate the age of the squid.
'Currently there's no good way to age a giant squid. It's thought they live for more than one year that's for sure, maybe they live for three or four, but no-one really knows.'
Niwa researchers catch a giant squid about once a decade. While giant squid are a global species, Stevens said New Zealand seems to be something of a hotspot for catching them.
'New Zealand is kind of the giant squid capital of the world – anywhere else a giant squid is caught in a net would be a massive deal. But there's been a few caught off New Zealand.'
Stevens said he had been on about 40 survey trips and only ever seen one other giant squid, so it was 'pretty rare'.
GLOW IN THE DARK SHARKS
While the giant squid was an unplanned discovery, a visiting Belgian scientist who was on the survey voyage in January, was on a mission to find glow in the dark sharks.
Dr Jérôme Mallefet of UCLouvain, a French-speaking university in Belgium, is the world's leading expert on bioluminescent sharks. Bioluminescence is the emission of visible light by a living organism.
According to Mallefet, about 11 per cent of all known shark species can produce bioluminescent light.
The Belgian scientist set up a dark lab while on board the ship to photograph the sharks. The room was completely blacked out to mimic the darkness of the deep-water ocean and Mallefet photographed the sharks using a specialised camera.
Before Mallefet's experiment, no-one had recorded bioluminescent sharks producing light in New Zealand waters.
'I was so happy. I was dreaming to get pictures of bioluminescent sharks [on the voyage] and I got them.'
Mallefet managed to photograph three species of bioluminescent sharks – the southern lantern shark, lucifer dogfish, and seal shark.
The sharks, like most bioluminescent species, produced blue light, a colour that travels well in the deep ocean.