Hello all! I'm new to the forum. I have a question that's been driving me crazy.

There was a report of a French Racing boat Geronimo being attacked by a giant squid reported as Architeuthis. According to reports, the sailors did see it alive. Is this true? Has Archie been seen alive?

By the way, I'm a student and I'm writing a research paper on giant squid, so the information will be most helpful. Also, I'd like to ask permission to use information I find here in my paper.

Thank you all soooo much!
Amoreena
Squid's Ink Design (my graphic design company)

From right here at TONMO.com:

LIVING ARCHITEUTHIS PHOTO (http://www.tonmo.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1358)

Others will no doubt say more.

:squid:

Hi Squidsinkdesign, (wow, strange name, but I like it!)

Welcome to TONMO, I hope you like it here and look forward to your posts.

:welcome:

With reference to your queries, apologies to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid the story of the squid attacking the Jules Verne Trophy yacht ‘Geronimo’ turned out to be a hoax. Suspicions were aroused almost immediately about this as no-one on board bothered to take a photograph of the beast, you’d think given the sheer improbability of the encounter someone would have done this.

The tale eventually unfolded as follows. Last January 13th, the ‘Geronimo’ got something snagged on its rudder, and they had to come to a full stop to cut it loose and make repairs. For some reason the crew radioed their home-base to tell them that a giant squid had attached itself to the rudder for a joke (this was the Jules Verne Trophy after all). The base-station called the media and reported the story almost immediately and the story began to be circulated. By then the damage had been done and despite follow up communications with the yacht crew confirming that the entire tale was apocryphal, the media largely failed to report the resolution of the story. The incident is listed in the ships log as ‘stopped to repair rudder’.

However, Architeuthis has indeed been seen alive, though very rarely and usually only when it is dying. Occasionally these animals are brought to the surface in trawl nets. There are some stunning photos of a live Architeuthis available on 'Living Architeuthis Thread', which caused a bit of a stir a month or so ago as they were the first photos to be displayed on an English language web-site as far as we can tell.

For information on Architeuthis and the larger(?) Mesonychoteuthis, the Fact Sheet available here (http://www.tonmo.com/science/public/giantsquidfacts.php)
is full of interesting and useful information (Don't believe what you read in the press about the giant squid. Most of it is wrong!)


Hope that helps!


:meso:

Looks like um... beat me to it! We must have crossed over replies.

8)

Looks like um... beat me to it! We must have crossed over replies.

8)

Parsimony. 8)

:lol:

don't forget our very own :oshea: 's baby Archis

J

don't forget our very own :oshea: 's baby Archis

Oh, yeah...

[slaps self in head]

Phil:

With reference to your queries, apologies to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid the story of the squid attacking the Jules Verne Trophy yacht ‘Geronimo’ turned out to be a hoax.

Do you have a reference to that? I am following up various alleged giant squid attacks and (although I read it wasn't true in another thread here) I haven't been able to track down any resources that confirm this. Clearly (as with a lot of these reports) the "urmmmmmm it wasn't really true" statement is less newsworthy than the "Giant Squid Attacks".

Sail World were keeping a close track of events and reported the 'attack':

http://www.sail-world.com/index.cfm?Nid=8392

but there is no mention there (or anywhere I can find online) of a follow up.

Emps

:welcome: to TONMO.com

Only adult architeuthis and a few larval archis have been seen alive. There are photos of the adult in the other thread but sadly it wasn't captured on film. The larval squid were caught on film and Steve O tried to raise them unsuccessfully. You can catch Steve's docu "On the Trail of Giants". I do not know when it will next be shown though.

There's also info on Steve's :baby: Archis on the discovery site including pics

J

Wowie! That's amazing! I have seen the discovery channel show several times. I'm actually going to go to the discovery store and buy myself a copy. Thank you all so much for the pictures from Japan.

I think I'm gonna like it here. :heee:

Do you have a reference to that? I am following up various alleged giant squid attacks and (although I read it wasn't true in another thread here) I haven't been able to track down any resources that confirm this.
Hello Emps,

Welcome to TONMO. You asked a good question, there; I haven't yet found an official retraction of the Geronimo story, though I do recall reading one earlier this year. I'll keep looking.

There are photos of the adult in the other thread but sadly it wasn't captured on film.
Joel,

Not that we know of, at any rate. Wouldn't surprise me if tape recorded at the rockpool were to show up, someday. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I can't believe there was only one still-cam present.

Yours truly,

Clem

Or maybe theres some selfish bastard out there watching the tape and laughing. :? Well maybe :D

Thanks for the kind welcome :) I'm no squid expert (although I have studied invertebrate palaeontology) but I am interested in the more 'unusual' cephalopod aspects and time and again I always seem to find myself back here as one of the leading resources online.

You asked a good question, there; I haven't yet found an official retraction of the Geronimo story, though I do recall reading one earlier this year. I'll keep looking.

I did a quick nose around online resources starting here:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=287937#post287937

and basically of the 4 big cases (not including the attack on the Geronimo) all the information is pretty much identical with just enough details for them to seem real but not quite enough to make it easy to track down any further information (suggesting that they may be derived from one source and it may not be an entirely reliable one). On the face of this this case should be the easiest to track down information for but seems elusive (mainly because such retrations are hardly big news).

I'll email the support team and see if they have any further information as their press office doesn't seem to have anything relevant:

http://www.rivacom.fr/scripts/index.cfm?fuseaction=Communique&eve_num=32&com_num=255

although a complete lack of a mention here:

http://www.rivacom.fr/scripts/index.cfm?fuseaction=Communique&eve_num=32&com_num=208

is probably significant ;)

I'll pass on anything they say.

-----------
Giant Squid attacks have been discussed here:

http://www.tonmo.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=494

and a critique and discussion of the National Geographic article is here:

http://www.tonmo.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=491

but again nothing concrete which sort of leaves the case in limbo.

Emps

I'm guessing this means that they are standing by their story:

For wich media are you working?
It seems that you have not read our ^press realease, Interview in many newspapers radio, TV,... Onthis subject.
I think your mail is a joke
Regards

Régis Rassouli
Geronimo’s Press officer
Riva Com r;-)

I'll ask him to clarify though ;)

Emps

And he replies back:

I absolutely confirm it.
And eleven crew mebers could tell you that it’s strict reality
2 of them see it

I'll ask if they have notarised statements - its what they did when the Alecton spotted a giant squid in 1861:

Bouyer, F., Moquin-Tandon, A & Milne-Edwards, H. (1861) Poulpe géant observé entre Madère et Ténériffe. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 53. 1263 - 7.

Emps

The following is a post on the Physio & Bio board (page 2 of 2) that discussed this hoax (c/o Phil). Unfortunately the link no longer sends you to the retraction (admission that the thing was a hoax).
.........

Apparently the bare facts are, that the racing trimaran 'Geronimo'
got something snagged on its rudder, and they had to come to
a full stop to cut it loose and make repairs. Tongue-in-cheek,
they radioed their base-station to report that a Giant Squid had
attached itself to the boat and was hanging on for dear life.
They kept up the premise for several hours, but then listed the
incident in their official log simply as: stopped to repair rudder.
http://www.broadband-my-ass.com/strips/081602-14552.jpg

It now seems clear the whole thing was a big 'Fish Tale'. ...

The navigation on their grandsrecords.com site is a little wacky,
but the English-language news entry for 13-JAN reads:
"...a giant cephalopod became tangled up around the rudder blade.
It took over an hour before the creature released its grip..."
But I think they were speaking metaphorically. They're now
declining to carry the gag any futher than it's already gone.
http://www.lyricsdomain.com/lyrics/24076/

It was their base station / support center that called the media.

A photo posted later shows them dead in the water, mucking around
with a large net or sail lying in the water. Might be their 'Squid':

http://www.grandsrecords.com/ker/rec/fr/graph/minisite/photo/tjv2003/jour4_2.jpg
http://www.grandsrecords.com/

Steve: Thanks for that - Phil was kind enough to PM it to me the other day ;)

When you say:

Unfortunately the link no longer sends you to the retraction (admission that the thing was a hoax).

Is that the link to their Grands Records site? If so it might be possible to dig out a cached version from somewhere (although I'm drawing a blank at the moment).

Emps[/quote]