Watch: Rare deep-sea squid attacks camera
A unusual red squid has been filmed plummeting to the darkest depths of the sea and snatching an underwater camera in its tentacles before disappearing.
The rare footage captures the Taningia Danae, at a depth of 1km, unfurling its fin and spreading its enormous tentacles over the camera lens. As it does so, it reveals two bioluminescent headlights – or photophores – which are the largest in the world and which the squid produces to startle its prey before entangling them in a fatal embrace.
The film was recorded by scientists from the University of Western Australia and Kelpie Geosciences in the UK.
The footage shows the roughly 75cm-long creature sink to the seafloor at 58 metres per minute, in an area called the Samoan Passage in the north Pacific.
Reviewing the footage, the scientists knew they had caught something very rare. Prof Alan Jamieson, the director of the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre, said: “Many records of this species are from strandings, accidental bycatch or from the stomach contents of whales.”
