Floater off Hawaii, you should get this one!

OB

Colossal Squid
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Squid%20Dec%2008%20DLW.jpg


The "spots" (tubercles) give this one away! I wonder whether I should or shouldn't move these threads to the ID forum...
 
Genus number 2 from the same sequence, very hard to tell from the photograph, and if it wasn't for the extremely slender tentacles I'd even give Architeuthis a whirl.

LargesquidDLWphoto.jpg


Edit: This Architeuthis specimen found floating off Los Gigantes, however, shows how the extremely large eyes, even when missing, make for an almost tubelike appearance of the head, with no real "hourglass waistline" at the base of the brachial crown, such as (possibly) displayed by the above shown specimen. Its pupil is also larger, but with a damaged animal, this is fairly hard to decide on.

giantsquidyoutube_antena3canarias.jpg
 
And another Histioteuthis, freshly killed, where the fisherman spotting and collecting it took it home to eat , only to find it extremely salty.

P.JPG
 
He didn't even know what it was, nor from what depths it was caught by the pod he was following at the time... Glad enough he took a picture, though, gives a good sense of scale.
 
Nice Histio shots -- someone more up on their Histio taxonomy than I am might even be able to have a guess at species from the Arms IV photophore patterns. I have a guess for Genus 2 depending on its size... :wink:
 
Kat, lost for scale, but (solely based on the waves' appearance in the photo) assuming a ML of at least 50 cm, again ASSUMING the squid to have a "normal" Loligo like built, what would be your take on genus 2?
 
I would guess Onykia robusta, which has occasionally been found as far south as Hawaii. The tentacles are quite slender (as you said) but they also look stretched, so perhaps not quite as naturally thin as they appear. But there's not a lot to go on in this photo other than size and a kind of vague 'I've seen some stuff that would have looked kind of like that if you cut off a whole bunch of pieces' :wink:
 

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