The Schmidt Ocean Institute recorded the colossal squid last month in the South Atlantic Ocean at a depth of nearly 2,000 feet below sea level.
One hundred years after its discovery, one of the largest, most elusive mollusks has been filmed alive in its natural environment for the first time.
On a recent expedition near the Antarctic South Sandwich Islands, researchers at the Schmidt Ocean Institute used a remotely-operated, underwater vehicle to capture the first confirmed video footage of a live colossal squid 2,254 feet below sea level.
The juvenile creature — identified by its transparent skin, round fin shape and eight arms, the middle of which have sharp hooks on the ends for catching prey — measured 30 centimeters (nearly one foot) long.
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Footage of another mysterious Antarctic glass squid was captured and published by ocean exploration and conservation nonprofit Kolossal in 2023, but due to the low resolution of the footage, the exact species of glass squid captured couldn't be confirmed.
The Palo Alto, California-based Schmidt Institute's 35-day-long expedition was part of a flagship effort aimed at discovering unknown marine life, conducted in collaboration with the Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, and GoSouth, a joint project between the United Kingdom's University of Plymouth, Germany's GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research and the British Antarctic survey.
"A lot of the information we have about these animals comes from dead specimens, and so the opportunity to see a live one always provides new insights," Dr. Kat Bolstad, an associate professor at the Aukland University of Technology, said of the lack of evidence in a press conference. "We can look at the relative sizes and lengths of things, and what kind of suckers and hooks they have and hypothesize how they might live, but we don't know for sure how they're behaving, how they position themselves in the water column, until we get a chance to see them alive."
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The colossal squid was first discovered in 1925 when scientists found a head and two arms in a sperm whale's stomach. Since then, only eight adult specimens have been reported, according to Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand, which has the only complete, publicly-displayed colossal squid in the world. Six of those specimens were remains similarly found in the stomachs of whales or toothfish.
As a result, scientists have been extremely limited in their research about the enormous creature. Colossal squid are estimated to grow to at least 23 feet (7 meters) in length and weigh as much as 1,100 lbs. (500 kilograms), making it the heaviest invertebrate on the planet, according to the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
Sizing up a colossal squid
Here's how it compares to other things you might see in the ocean.
Graphic by Nelson Hsu/NBC
The footage, which was filmed March 9, was live-streamed on the Schmidt Institute's YouTube page as part of an initiative to include uninvolved scientists and deep-sea enthusiasts in each expedition. It was one of those viewers who first alerted glass squid expert Aaron Evans — who was also watching from home — to the possibility of the creature's importance.
A similar Schmidt Institute expedition in January filmed the first confirmed footage of the glacial glass squid, another type of glass squid which, due in part to its depth, has eluded curious scientists for decades.
Little is known about the colossal squid's lifespan, diet or reproductive cycle, though scientists, who have mostly had access to tiny hatchlings and deceased adult specimens, have concluded that at some point in its maturation, the juvenile squid loses its characteristic transparent skin.
The high-definition footage captured on the Ocean Census expedition offered several insights into its other characteristics. The lack of baby features — meaning its larger fins, developed hooks, and eyes that are attached to its head rather than positioned on the end of stalks — gives researchers an idea of what a "teenaged" colossal squid looks like. Additionally, the presence of large rust-colored spots on its body support the theory that colossal squids can change their skin color like octopi and other squids.
But there are still so many basic unanswered questions about the squid and its relatives, and scientists believe this footage will be monumental in aiding their future research.
"For us to get footage of a juvenile to begin with is so wonderful. It gives us a starting place because the life history of the colossal squid itself is kind of poorly known," Evans said in the press conference. "For us to see this kind of mid-range size, in between a hatchling and an adult, is really exciting because it gives us the opportunity to fill in some of those missing puzzle pieces to the life history of this very mysterious and enigmatic animal."
One of the reasons it's taken so long to capture footage of a colossal squid, juvenile or adult, is the size of the creature's eyes, Evans theorized.
The colossal squid has the largest eyes of any animal ever studied, with eyes measuring about 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) across — about the size of a standard soccer ball, according to Te Papa. Some scientists even hypothesize that the creature has the largest eyes of any animal that has ever existed.
The squid's large pupils, along with its photophores (or built-in headlights behind each eyeball), allow it to see and sense the things around it long before deep-sea diving technology can see the squid. As a result, colossal squids have plenty of time to swim away from the robotic cameras, which are often large, loud and resemblant of predators.
One solution may be to create underwater recording technology that use low-light or red-light camera systems, similar to the one used on the January expedition that captured the glacial glass squid, that may be less likely to disturb the animals.
It's an important obstacle to overcome. Only 29% of the planet is occupied by land, and the ocean — especially the deep sea — is relatively unexplored. There's a whole world of exciting and potentially beneficial life along the ocean floor, said Dr. Michelle Taylor, the principle investigator on the expedition.
"The deep sea is the largest habitat that we have on the planet," Taylor said. "If we're being super selfish, a lot of animals in marine environments are really useful to humans. There are [sponges] that have anti-cancer properties, that have antibacterial properties ... [these organisms] have compounds that might be enormously useful to to the rest of us living on this tiny land section of our big, blue planet."
As research continues to develop and scientists discover more information about the colossal squid and other lesser-understood cephalopods, people will undoubtedly focus on the monstrous nature of the creature as so often happens with newly-discovered deep-sea beasts, Bolstad said. But for now, Bolstad hopes people focus on the beauty present in the footage and the potential for a greater understanding of how the planet works.
"One of the things I love about this footage is how delicate this animal appears to be. It looks like a glass sculpture — it shows clearly why this family is called the glass squids," she said. "We get to introduce the live colossal squid to the world as this beautiful, little, delicate animal that highlights the magnificence of a lot of deep sea creatures without some of that monster hype."
