giant squid – Lee Duigon

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu. These fantasies feature giant squids, or something very like them.

I like a plate of fried calamari. But the giant squid–50 feet long, sometimes longer: nobody really knows for sure–well, that’s another story. A very dramatic one: here’s a clip from the movie.

Anyhow, we don’t know how many gigantic squids there might be in the ocean, how they live, how big they get to be, etc., etc. Sperm whales eat them. Big squids wash up on the shore, dead as doornails. I don’t think anyone has ever seen a live one…

And lived to tell about it.

Mr. Nature here–with something almost never seen by human beings: a giant squid.

Well, maybe not the 40- or 50-footers that sometimes wash up, much the worse for wear, on stony shores; but big enough to wow the crowd of people who saw it in Toyama Bay in central Japan.

What was it doing in such shallow water, so close to land? Who volunteered to go down there with a camera and film it under water? (Jules Verne would have definitely advised him not to!) There isn’t much information to go along with the video.

I suspect this poor animal is sick, too weak to keep the tide from washing him inshore, too distressed to react to human beings. Healthy squid are extremely vigorous, with extremely healthy appetites. I do love calamari rings, but there’s a limit to how much risk I’d take, to get them.