How we found the giant squid Edith Widder

the Kraken a beast so terrifying it was

said to devour men and ships and whales

and so enormous it could be mistaken for

an island in assessing the merits of

such tales it’s probably wise to keep in

mind that all sailors saw that the only

difference between a fairy tale and a

sea story is a fairy tale begins once

upon a time and a sea story begins this

ain’t no every fish that gets away

grows with every telling of the tale

nevertheless there are giants in the

ocean and we now have video proof as

those of you that saw the Discovery

Channel documentary are no doubt aware I

was one of the three scientists on this

expedition that took place last summer

off Japan I’m the short one the other

two are dr. suni Miku vedera

and dr. Steve O’Shea I owe my

participation in this now historic event

to Ted in 2010 there was a TED event

called mission blue held aboard the

Lindblad Explorer in the Galapagos as

part of the fulfillment of Sylvia Earls

Ted wish I spoke about a new way of

exploring the ocean one that focuses on

attracting animals instead of scaring

them away Mike deGruy was also invited

and he spoke with great passion about

his love of the ocean and he also talked

to me about applying my approach to

something he’s been involved with for a

very long time which is the hunt for the

giant squid it was Mike that got me

invited to the squid summit a gathering

of squid experts at the Discovery

Channel that summer during Shark Week I

gave a talk on unobtrusive viewing an

optical luring of deep-sea squid in

which I emphasized the importance of

using quiet unobtrusive platforms for

exploration this came out of hundreds of

dives I have made

farting around in the dark using these

platforms and my impression that I saw

more animals working from the

submersible than I did with either of

the remote operated vehicles but that

could just be because the submersible

has a wider field of view but I also

felt like I saw more animals working

with the Tiburon than the van Tana two

vehicles with the same field of view but

different propulsion systems so my

suspicion was that it might have

something to do with the amount of noise

they made so I set up a hydrophone on

the bottom of the ocean and I had each

of these flyby at the same speed and

distance and recorded the sound they

made the Johnson ceiling which you can

probably just barely hear here uses

electric thrusters very very quiet the

Tiburon also uses electric powered

thrusters it’s also pretty quiet but a

bit noisier but most deep diving ROV

these days use hydraulics and they sound

like the Ventana I think that’s got to

be scaring a lot of animals away so for

the deep-sea squid hunt I proposed using

an optical lure attached to a camera

platform with no thrusters no motors

just a battery-powered camera and the

only illumination coming from red light

that’s invisible to most deep-sea

animals that are adapted to see plant

primarily blue that’s visible to our eye

but it’s the equivalent of infrared in

the deep sea so this camera platform

which we called the Medusa could just be

thrown off the back of the ship attached

to a float at the surface with over

2,000 feet of line it would just float

around passively carried by the currents

and the only light visible to the

animals in the deep would be the blue

light of the optical lure which we

called the electronic jellyfish or a

jelly because it was designed to imitate

the bioluminescent display of the common

deep-sea jellyfish at Ola now this

pinwheel of light that the Attalla

produces is known as a bioluminescent

burglar alarm and it’s a form of defense

the reason that the electronic jellyfish

worked as a lure is not because giant

squid eat jellyfish but it’s because

this jellyfish only resorts to producing

this light when it’s being chewed on by

a predator and its only hope for escape

may be to attract the attention of a

larger predator that will attack its

attacker and thereby afforded an

opportunity for escape it’s a scream for

help a latch dished attempt for escape

and a common form of defense in the deep

sea the approach worked

whereas all previous expeditions had

failed to garner a single video glimpse

of the giant we managed six and the

first triggered wild excitement oh my

god

it was like it was teasing us doing a

kind of sand dance now you see me now

you don’t and we had for such teasing

appearances and then on the fist it came

in and totally wowed us

Oh Marty what really wowed me about that

was the way it came in up over the

e-jelly and then attacked the enormous

thing next to it which I think it

mistook for the predator on the e-jelly

but even more incredible was the footage

shot from the Triton submersible what

was not mentioned in the discovery

documentary was that the bait squid that

dr. Koo vedera used of 1 meter long

Diamondback squid had a light attached

to it a squid jig of the type that

longline fishermen use and I think it

was this light that brought the Giant in

now what you’re seeing is the

intensified cameras view under red light

and that’s all dr. kubodera could see

when the giant comes in here and then he

got so excited he turned on his

flashlight if he wanted to see better

and the giant didn’t run away

so he risked turning on the white lights

on the submersible bringing a creature

of legend from the misty history into a

high-resolution video it was absolutely

breathtaking

and had this animal had its feeding

tentacles intact and fully extended it

would have been as tall as a two-story

house how could something that big live

in our ocean and yet remain unfilmed

until now we’ve only explored about five

percent of our ocean there are great

discoveries yet to be made down there

fantastic creatures representing

millions of years of evolution and

possibly bioactive compounds that could

benefit us in ways that we can’t even

yet imagine yet we have spent only a

tiny fraction of the money on ocean

exploration that we’ve spent on space

exploration we need a NASA like

organization for ocean exploration

because we need to be exploring and

protecting our life-support systems here

on earth we need thank you

exploration is the engine that drives

innovation innovation drives economic

growth so let’s all go exploring but

let’s do it in a way that doesn’t scare

the animals away or as Mike deGruy once

said if you want to get away from it all

and see something you’ve never seen or

have an excellent chance of seeing

something that no one’s ever seen

getting a sub he should have been with

us for this admit adventure we miss him