On Mexico's Sea of Cortez a marine
biologist prepares to encounter an animal
local fisherman fear more than sharks.
He is exploring a nether-world between fantasy and fact,
pursuing a legendary monster of the deep that does, in fact, exits...
Around the world, strange carcasses drift ashore,
and fishermen catch huge creatures they have never seen before.
Bit by bit, the secret life of this strange animal is becoming Known.
We can study its anatomy and the behavior of its smaller relatives -
the bizarre and wonderful creatures called cephalopods.
If they did live anywhere where a man lived,
they would make mince-meat of him in no time.
Fiction has always branded the giant squid a ferocious enemy of man,
and some of its close relations can be terrifying indeed.
Master of the deep ocean, the sperm whale Knows what we cannot,
but recently scientists have found a way to learn its secrets.
"Whales were Known to feed on squids,
so it made sense to me try to use the sperm whale
as our "hound dog" to lead us to the giant squid.
"We really don't Know very much about what happens to whales
once they leave the surface.
So we're working with a mystery that is hunting a mystery."
Descend with us now
into the dark and mysterious world of the sperm whale
and its fearsome quarry, Architeuthis, the giant squid.
For most of human history the ocean has seemed a terrifying place.
Superstitious sailors reported many strange sightings at sea.
Their stories summoned up a fantastic variety of monsters
that threatened them.
These ominous creatures were often blamed when disaster struck-
as it frequently did.
Perhaps the most feared of all was called "the Kraken"
a many-armed beast of incredible size and strength.
But most sea monsters proved to be harmless or non-existent.
All but "the Kraken" - Known today as the giant squid.
The national Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Houses over a hundred thousand squid specimens -
one of the largest collections in the world.
In this working laboratory,
Smithsonian zoologist Dr. Clyde Roper is engrossed
in the study of cephalopods,
such as octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid -
and he welcomes the notoriety of the giant squid.
"People have to have their monsters, for some reason,
and, uh, of course squid make a perfect monster
because I really think that, um,
especially for many young people today
that the giant squid has become the new dinosaur."
It's called Architeuthis, Greek for "the ruling squid".
It is the perfect sea monster in fantasy,
and a formidable predator in fact.
It dwarfs most other life in the sea.
It deploys a writhing mass of suckered arms and tentacles
which ensnare its prey and jam it into a parrot-like beak
It glares upon the world with the largest eyes in the animal kingdom.
Clyde Roper has a life-long passion for the giant squid,
and is determined to see one alive in its natural habitat.
It all began when he was a teenager,
working as a lobster fisherman in New Hampshire.
"It doesn't take very long, when you're working on, on cephalopods...
"squids especially, uh, become aware
that giant squids actually exist.
"And, as a idealistic young fellow,
I was pretty, um, incensed that so many...
"mis-truths could be told about these magnificent animals.
And, as I got deeper and deeper into it,
I understood why there were so many misunderstandings
and that is because there were so few specimens
that had ever been found,
no giant squid had ever been seen alive and,
until this day, has never been seen alive and photographed.
So, I became interested in trying to learn about these animals
just so I could tell the truth about them and try to dispel the myths."
The aura of terrifying mystery is not easily dispelled.
A report, by a French warship, of an encounter with a giant squid
fired the imagination of novelist Jules Verne.
His classic 20,000 leagues Under the Sea was published in 1870.
Verne's fictional squid updated the ship-eating legend of the Kraken.
This squid did not hesitate to attack the Nautilus,
Captain Nemo's electric submarine.
"Giant squid astern, sir!"
The terror of the giant squid may be fictional,
but its mystery is very real.
Once in a while, a giant squid carcass will be washed ashore.
Often, these are juvenile squid -
more bizarre and pathetic than threatening.
Only an expert can tell its species,
and that it could have grown to may times this size.
In modern times, more and more giant squid have been caught by fishermen
as they work in deeper water.
They are almost always dead, or nearly so,
when brought aboard.
Rarely does a scientist get to examine a newly caught specimen,
and never a live one.
Most have turned up in the waters around New Zealand,
Norway, and Newfoundland.
This one, measuring more than 30 feet, was caught off Tasmania.
>From such fragmentary evidence,
scientists conclude that giant squid live in deep water
and that they are predators.
They are believed to live only a few years and to grow very rapidly -
no one Knows how large.
The biggest actually measured was almost 60 feet
and weighed about a ton.
It is the world's largest and most powerful invertebrate,
portrayed as a villain in many tales of the sea.
"Giant squid have a reputation for being vindictive
and vicious and fierce."
"They have no reason t be, uh, vindictive and fierce.
They normally don't interact with human beings.
Uh, in fact, I wish they would act a little more,
react with human beings so that we could find them.
At any rate, I think the reputation is certainly not deserved at all.
"Because they're so interesting,
on their own account, that we don't need to make things up about them.
"Squids are really exciting to me
because they have wonderful adaptations for the,
for their life in the sea, and these include things like:
Like photophores or light organs,
where they can flash and glow, uh, different colors;
they are fast animals; they're powerful; some like cat's claws to,
to collect their prey; uh, some of really are fascinating animals."
Squid are weird and wonderful -
they, and their close relatives,
have been called "aliens from inner space."
Indeed, they ride the underwater currents with a serenity
that seems almost supernatural.
Squid are remarkably intelligent,
and their primary nerve fibers are the largest in the animal kingdom -
a hundred times the diameter of humans.
Thousands of multi-celled organs,
called chromatophores, are scattered across their skin.
Each, receives signals directly from the brain.
This allows cuttlefish and squid to transform their appearance -
in less than a second.
These changes in appearance provide camouflage
and a dramatic means of communication.
>From seductive yearnings to aggressive warnings,
all can be conveyed by resplendent displays of light and color.
The advanced nervous system gives them lightning reflexes
and a deadly attack
off the California coast, near Monterey,
a submersible robot is lowered into the deep.
"Sonar is..."
Below, is Monterey Canyon,
the deepest submarine fissure along the continental United States
and probably the most carefully observed deep water in the world.
Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
have been studying life in canyon on a regular basis
for more than a decade.
"Yeah... what's up here to the right."
"Look at this guy, right up..."
Any day, they could discover a living Architeuthis
and they have observed many remarkable squid.
They have also observed species of squid never before seen alive
in their natural element.
Moroteuthis, a slender and very large squid,
which grows up to 15 feet;
Like the giant squid, almost nothing is Known about its behavior.
Perhaps the strangest is Vampyroteuthis.
It's been called a "living fossil"
and is completely covered with what seem to be light organs,
But whose exact function is unKnown.
It's a remarkable contortionist,
presenting to its enemies a ball of spikes.
The spikes are soft however and probably are used only for detection.
As varied and mysterious as they are,
squid are short-lived, fast-growing and very prolific.
Shallow water species gather in huge numbers to breed.
These tentacled couplings are anything but random -
as males compete savagely for females.
Many die naturally soon after mating...
if they don't fall victim to the countless predators that pursue them.
Squid are among the most numerous free-swimming creatures in the sea,
and a crucial part of the oceanic food chain.
Today, they support a massive fishery.
Some two million metric tons of squid are consumed annually,
much of it in Japan and the Far East.
Small squid are the most popular sushi.
But everyone has heard about the giant squid -
and it's gotten to be like the "Jolly Green Giant"
for Japanese consumers.
"Hungry? - Nissin Seafood Noodle."
Mexico's Sea of Cortez:
Every few years, squid of unusual size and ferocity are reported here.
Clyde Roper has come to investigate.
The squid live in dark underwater canyons.
They rise close to the surface at night to feed.
They're called Dosidicus gigas - or the Humboldt squid.
For safety, Roper will deploy a protective shelter
where he can find refuge if he needs to.
This time of year, Dosidicus still have a few feet to grow.
But already, some are six feet long and,
at times, they feed like starving piranhas.
Roper has never seen Dosidicus this big before,
but he's eager to have the experience.
"They have, a, a, an incredible reputation and, uh,
many of the fishermen say they would rather
fall into a uh, into the water with, uh, sharks
in a feeding frenzy rather than in a, a feeding frenzy of Humboldt squid
because they have been Known to kill people
when they fall into the water with them.
"There, here he comes.
"In fact, they are so aggressive that they become, uh,
they become cannibalistic."
A hungry squid immediately begins to feed on the one
that is hooked and defenseless.
Dosidicus often prey on one another -
one thing that could account for the rapid growth of those survive.
Some might consider this an experience to be avoided;
but big squid like the Humboldt don't survive in captivity.
For Roper, the chance to see them in the wild is a priceless opportunity.
Like smaller squid, Dosidicus shows vivid flashes of color
when aroused or threatened.
Roper wants a close-up look- not easy
when the object of study can deploy two tentacles,
eight arms lined with powerful suckers,
and a razor sharp beak
And all this is concealed at times by clouds of dense ink,
deployed by squid to confuse their enemies.
Having a squid inside the shelter was not part of the plan.
Roper tries to give it room to escape
but gets a sharp nip from the departing squid anyway.
"Ech!"
Later, Roper feels bold enough to venture out
and observe Dosidicus in open water.
It is as close as he has ever come to seeing
what Architeuthis might be like when feeding.
"At first, I was quite apprehensive.
Uh, it was a little scary.
But we were dealing with mostly individuals.
They were not in a feeding frenzy, so it, uh, it felt more comfortable.
"Oh, what a great animal.
I was impressed at how incredibly powerful it is and how it swims...
Clyde Roper is not the first scientist to be caught up
in the thrill of the hunt for big
squid.
"And to see the funnel so expanded and,
and moving out so fast, it was great."
In the nineteen sixties, in fishing villages throughout Newfoundland,
curious posters appeared.
The reward for a giant squid was the brainchild
of the late Frederick Aldrich.
An expert on mollusks, Dr. Aldrich found himself in a region
where giant squid are a proud part of local history.
Back in october 1873, Newfoundland fishermen came upon a giant squid
The squid wrapped a tentacle around their boat.
But one fisherman, a 12-year-old boy,
quickly hacked the tentacle off, and the monster retreated.
Only a month later,
Newfoundland fishermen hauled up a giant squid 32 feet long.
This was the first complete specimen ever examined by scientists.
And it was the first of many giant squid stranded or caught
by Newfoundland fishermen.
But examining the dead was not enough for Frederick Aldrich -
he went after a live one.
"Fred was really one of the first people to actually want to go out
and try to find giant squid.
"I think Fred liked the mythology
and he liked the, the, the giantness, the bigness of it all.
In 1989, Aldrich managed to mount a deep sea expedition
to look for the giant squid.
It was an enterprise that has been compared to parachuting at night
into an area of the United States picked at random -
and hoping to see a grizzly bear.
But Aldrich was determined.
The sub descended a thousand feet in an area
where giant squid have often washed ashore.
It was literally a shot in the dark
Bait attracted an array of bottom fish.
For ten hours Aldrich watched and waited,
but Architeuthis ignored his invitation.
I am not disappointed.
The fact that I didn't see one
does not effect my understanding of these animals whatsoever.
I never really held out much hope that I would see one,
because 'oh, Lord, the ocean is so big and my ship so small.
The brief expedition ended and Aldrich died a few years later.
As deep water technology has improved,
there have been more and more expeditions
that could encounter a giant squid.
Many new species have been observed.
And some have been seen that could indeed be called monstrous.
This is the biggest shark ever seen in the deep sea.
A pacific sleeper shark that turned up in Japan's Suruga Bay.
Well over 23 feet in length,
it loomed so large the camera couldn't see it all.
After investigating the sub for five suspenseful minutes,
the giant went way,
leaving observing scientists excited - and a bit relieved.
Once dismissed as mere sensationalism,
the search for the giant squid
continues to gain impressive proponents today.
One is Dr. Malcolm Clarke,
a specialist in sperm whales and oceanic squid.
"I think the good has always got to have a balance of evil.
You, you see the beauty in, in the sea.
Many of, uh, the fish are very beautiful
to look at, uh, and, uh, have wonderful silvery sides,
they make pretty lights.
Uh, that's the beauty -
you need a few big-teethed,
big stomached monsters to go along with it.
As a young graduate student,
Malcolm Clarke conducted research aboard a factory ship
that hunted sperm whales -
once considered sea monsters, in their own right.
Little was Known about sperm whale biology
despite centuries of killing them.
Only dwindling populations put scientists aboard whaling boats
to study the huge animals.
Clarke inspected hundreds of sperm whale stomachs.
One thing he found were the beaks of deep-sea squid,
too tough to be digested.
This proved that squid are the sperm whale's primary source of food.
And Clarke amassed a huge collection of beaks -
as many as eighteen thousand from a single whale.
Among them, are many beaks of the giant squid.
"This came from a giant squid
that was taken from the stomach of a sperm whale caught in the Azores.
Uh, so that, uh, it wasn't a tremendously large one.
It was probably, uh, thirty, in excess of thirty feet in length.
So it was quite a big squid, but, um, not one of the biggest.
Uh, but certainly, it's got very, very powerful jaws.
So that this is very, very formidable.
And, uh, of course, if they did live anywhere where a man lived, eh,
they would make mincemeat of him in no time.
On a remote shore in New Zealand, sperm whales have stranded.
What causes whales to strand is still a mystery.
Clyde Roper and Malcolm Clarke undertake the grim task
of examining the carcasses
and discover evidence of their common passion, the giant squid.
The skins of sperm whales are like weathered maps of ancient battles.
The circular scars were left by sharp-toothed suckers of giant squid,
marking their last desperate struggles
in the jaws of the Leviathan.
"They have fifty teeth.
These are in a, uh, form two rows in the lowerjaw.
They don't have any upper teeth usually.
Uh, but the jaw is very, very narrow.
It can be about fifteen feet long and, uh, be a foot across.
So, it's very, very long and narrow.
Uh, and it's a snapping jaw, it's rather like some of the crocodiles.
It can probably, uh, snap shut very rapidly
and they snap this jaw against the upperjaw.
Bang!
And, in that movement, they squeeze the squid
and it doesn't matter that the teeth don't damage them much;
the squid will virtually go paralyzed.
They, they don't like being squeezed, squids don't -
It's one of their features - not like humans.
And, uh, if they're squeezed by the jaws, with these teeth,
and there's a big, very powerful tongue right at back of the jaws to,
to push it down the throat.
Experts on both whale and squid, Clarke and Roper are uniquely
to execute a new strategy in the search of Arthieuthis.
"Whales were Known to feed on squid right from the very beginning,
in the earliest days of, uh, of the whale hunting expeditions,
and some of those were actually giant squid.
So it made sense to me to try to use the sperm whale as our 'hound dog'
to, to lead us to, to the giant squid
and that quest has brought on this current expedition."
Off the Azores,
Roper and Clarke help to deploy a hydrophone to listen for sperm whales.
They, and the other scientists on this expedition,
are combining their search for the giant squid
with research on the squid's most formidable enemy.
Hydrophones can detect the sounds of sperm whales from several miles away
- Iong before they can be spotted visually.
But the whales themselves have excellent hearing
and often keep their distance from boats.
Today, the scientists are in luck
The whales are feeling sociable.
A group of sperm whales is playing nearby.
Female and their young come to feed here
in the warm waters of the mid-Atlantic
and announce their presence with an excited chorus of sounds.
"Good grief!
It is an audience clapping.
And they're clapping at us.
When sperm whales gather, this is anything but 'a silent world'.
A distinct series of clicks is called a "coda" used for communication.
Deciphering the sounds is a challenge
for behavioral experts like Cornell University's Kurt Fristrup.
"Now that's one of the unKnowns.
That could very well be used for echo-raging, sonar."
Sometimes divers can get very close to sperm whales.
It's a tremendous thrill to be kindly received
by the most powerful predators on earth.
Up close, a different sound is sometimes heard.
This loud and singular noise could be a warming
or even a weapon - Ioud enough to stun a whale's prey.
The sperm whale's head is fully one third of its total weight
and most of it is nose - the largest in the animal kingdom.
This is where the sounds are created.
They're generated in the front of the nose,
then redirected as they resound powerful off the whale's skull.
No one Knows exactly how.
This remarkable organ also holds tons of spermaceti oil.
By regulating its temperature,
the whale may be able to control their buoyancy.
This would allow them to conserve energy
on their long dives to hunt for squid.
In any case,
the whales seem in perfect control when they sleep
suspended virtually just below the waves and swells.
This remarkable behavior has only recently been reported and filmed.
Mother sperm whales are doting parents.
Their calves are slow to mature.
They stay in close contact with their mothers,
but their ability to dive is limited.
A mature female needs more than half a ton of food a day...
and her food source - large oceanic squid-
may be thousands of feet below.
So she must leave her calf at the surface
- sometimes for almost an hour.
The calves are incredibly trusting and playful
and will often approach and even nuzzle a diver.
This one offers its mouth for inspection.
The mother can go down more than half a mile
a plunge deep into the unKnown.
"We really don't Know how sperm whales locate their prey,
how they hunt, how they locate their prey
and how they actually consume their prey.
There are several hypotheses:
One is that they use echolocation and get the signals back that way...
Somehow sperm whales "see" the world around them
through a panorama of reflected sounds.
This certainly helps them navigate underwater,
but can they detect and catch soft-bodied squids?
The scientists seek another explanation.
"They can use the, their eyes to see the bioluminescence
that might be created either by the squids themselves
or by the squids swimming through the water
and creating a swirl of bioluminescence.
"When they swim through the water
they disturb all the little organisms that are in the water,
and these little organisms, because they're disturbed,
set off a glowing or flashing.
"Perhaps the whales then key on these strips of bioluminescence
or streaks of bioluminescence
and will be able to home in on the squid in that way.
"So, it's a little difficult to Know exactly what it is
and that's just one more thing we could see
if we could get down into the sea with these giant whales."
To follow whales into the deep
has long been a favorite theme of poets and a dream of engineers.
Now, with support from the National Geographic Society,
one man has managed to do it.
He's Greg Marshall, inventor of a system called crittercam.
It's a simple concept that has proven very difficult to execute.
"I had the idea for the crittercam 11 years ago.
Since then, basically, every waking moment,
I've spent thinking about, developing, working on making this thing happen."
In early experiment,
cameras were strapped to the backs of sea turtles
before being risked in the wild.
"What motivates me is the,
the possibility of discovering totally new phenomena of nature,
seeing things we've never seem before."
The spirited fur seal provided a greatest challenge.
A smaller, more rugged camera needed to enter its frenetic world.
With sperm whales,
every step from deployment to retrieval
has been fraught with difficulty.
"It's only through, you Know, really carefully engineering
and then some trial and error and experience
the field that we've, that we've finally been able to succe
in the way that we have."
After years of experimentation,
crittercam is finally ready for serious field work in the Azores.
The scientists are hopeful that the camera can survive a deep water dive,
and be located and recovered afterwards.
"Um, underwater it weights nothing, of course,
so that, uh, it just floats right back after it's released from the animal.
Floats back at about this orientation and,
uh, will stick out of the water about this far."
The system must be able to endure extreme pressure
and record picture in almost total darKness.
The compact unit includes lights; instruments to record depth,
temperature and sound; acoustic and radio homing transmitters;
and a video camera able to amplify light over 50,000 times.
"Greg! Come over!"
The first task is often the hardest getting close to the whales.
"You guys, can direct us to where it is, okay?"
Scientists have used these techniques to attach instruments to whales,
but no one has tried to attach a camera before.
They are breaking new ground.
"It was a challenge to get close to these whales,
an emotional challenge.
Uh. Clearly, we'd heard all the stories of, of the, the havoc
that the sperm whales had wreaked on ships in the past and so forth and,
you Know, I, I didn't Know,
what, uh, reaction of a, of the whales might be to us.
So, when we first started approaching the whales,
I was a bit nervous, there's no question about it."
The camera can be attached by a tag the size of a paper clip
- or with a large suction cup.
A successful deployment depends entirely on the whims of the whales.
At the moment, they appear to want a little time to themselves.
"We spend a lot of time on the water trying to get close to the whales,
a lot of time on the water, and you have to do that because
the whales are only at the surface of a few minutes every hour.
Uh, so we have to be perfectly in position,
anticipating where the whales are coming up, uh,
in order to place ourselves close enough
so that we can get to them during and opportunity deploy."
"You've got whales, uh, right ahead of you.
They'll be off you, uh, starboard bow, about a hundred and fifty meters.
Uh, there's a whole gaggle of them, they're a social group.
Three or four small ones and a couple of large ones.
"What we've found, for the most part,
is that the whales tend to be quite curious about us.
If we're quiet in their environment, we've found that,
as often as not, they tend to actually come over and investigate us.
The system is launch and we are riding in a pod of whales.
The clicking noises are made by the whales,
and for the first time
we can see exactly how their sounds relate to their behavior.
It's a revelation how close the whale are
in their constant calling and with their bodies touching one another.
Then, as dolphins join the array, it's like an undersea dance.
They sometimes ride the subsurface waves
generated by the forward thrust of the whales
these mountains of movement.
Crittercam is working well near the surface.
Now comes the real test as whales descend into the deep.
They will disappear for more than 20 minutes.
The scientist are left alone with their hopes and their fears.
"If we don't retrieve the system, we get none of the data,
we get none of the images, none of the audio, we learn nothing.
Unless we recover it, it's a bust."
A messenger form another world, crittercam returns from the deep.
It has detached before it should have,
but its homing signal is loud and clear.
After eleven year of trial and error and months on the high seas,
a moment of truth has arrived.
"Look at that, look at that, what is that?
That's the... the blowhole ...look, puffs up there...
The camera is tethered about six feet behind the blowhole and face forward
we are with several whales diving together.
On the right, a juvenile.
This could be a training dive.
Calves only gradually learn to dive as deep as their mothers.
The clicking sounds appear to be coming from more than one whale.
Some scientists believe that each whale has its own signature coda.
Tapes like this one could help support the theory.
It's darker and deeper now
and another whale comes into view at the upper left.
Strange new sounds are heard growls, grunts even squeals.
No one has conclusively identified these sounds with sperm whales before.
Now the whales are over nine hundred feet deep and a strange thing happens.
They almost stop and one moves back as if inspecting crittercam...
it's head and eye are just to the right off camera.
There is a long moment of consideration and then,
apparently satisfied,
the whales speed up again, going deeper still.
There's two, there's two of them there.
This is the calf.
1200 feet at this depth the pressure is enormous
over five hundred pounds per square inch.
Until the 1960's,
no conventional submarine could descend this deep
without being crushed like an eggshell.
How sperm whales survive these depths is still not understood.
But they've been doing it for million of year
- lured here by vast bounty of large oceanic squid.
They will not find Architeuthis this time,
but each moment is a revelation for Roper and his colleagues.
"The interesting thing here,
you can, you can hear that these different coda that we're hearing,
um, each one is slightly different and,
and every once in a while we hear a buzz.
"Now the whales have stopped.
The, the camera is pointing right down,
uh, right down into the skin of the, of the whale
that's, uh, that's carrying the crittercam.
"There see, now I'm hearing that, hearing that buzz which is...
That's fantastic, that's so...
Yeah, that's a fantastic sound, that long, long buzzing sound and,
uh, this is, uh, what, we believe is the sonar that they're using for,
when they're actually hunting,
or have actually picked up a prey organism
and they're zeroing-in on the prey and getting closer and closer to it.
"Now they're starting to move again and,
uh, have turned and turned back towards the surface
because now we can see, uh, the lighted,
uh, the background that's lighted.
So they're heading back up to the surface.
"Whoa! There comes a, a, a whale right across,
another one, right across in front of the camera."
"There's two more.
Look at that!"
"And there's a, there's a third one over on that side on the right.
So, that makes four whales...
The, the crittercam has been Knocked off,
that's how closely, uh, the whales were to each other,
really rubbing along, uh, side-by-side."
No giant squid was found.
But this and other crittercam dives make the expedition a stunning success.
"We were able, for the very, very first time,
to enter into the deep-sea domain of the sperm whale.
By playing these instrument on the whale, um,
we were able to get down to many hundreds of meters deep
and how the animal actually behaves down in those depths."
But the sperm whales seem blissfully unaware of our efforts to enter
and understand their world.
They have appointments to keep far below,
which we can still see only our imagination.
One day, in the not too distance future,
a whale may bring us a living portrait of Architeuthis
and one of the last great challenges in natural science
and photography will be met.
But for the moment,
we must contemplate these great whales as we always have,
fascinated by their physical powers,
tantalized by the secrets they hold in their great brains.
Two-thirds of our planet lies in the deep ocean,
and that mysterious realm is their home.
In search of the giant squid,
Clyde Roper and his colleagues seem undaunted by the obstacles they face
happily engrossed in the hunt for the creature that fascinates them.
Perhaps there is much truth in John Steinbeck's observation,
that men need sea monsters in their personal oceans
that an ocean with its nameless creatures
would be like sleep without dreams.