From the vault: first ever photograph of a live Architeuthis in its natural habitat?

OB

Colossal Squid
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This photograph, from the 2003-2004 Heard Island expedition (sub antarctic) has always intrigued me. It was taken, using an autotrigger device, at a depth of 200 meters, prior to Tsunemi Kubodera's famous Bonin Islands series. As far as I know, it has always been classified as simply an "unknown large squid", but I have an inclination to (want to?) believe it might be Architeuthis. The one thing which always kept me from stating anything definitively is the clearly visible dorsal "line", where the mantle musculature connects to the gladius, a feature of which I am unaware of in Architeuthis. Also, arm length apears to be towards the short side of the giant squid spectrum. I'll let you be the judge...

squid_hi.jpg
 
I get these families when I put it through the SI key and I removed a few that it is definitely not:

Architeuthidae
Chiroteuthidae
Cranchiidae
Ommastrephidae
Onychoteuthidae
Psychroteuthidae

I'm thinking it might be a Psychroteuthis.
 
I'd lean towards Onychoteuthidae and a few others:

Psychroteuthis glacialis
Ancistroteuthis
Notonykia

PS: 200 meters seems a little on the shallower side (generally speaking when talking about deep sea squid or perhaps Archithuethis!)
 
Nice photo! Any indication of size other than 'large'? Psychro can actually get biggish, but another possibility in borderline Antarctic waters might be Kondakovia (can't see any ridges on the mantle but the lighting/detail isn't that great).
 
Kondakovia has slightly shorter arms, I think, yet that's based on post mortem photographs, shrinkage usually occurs, but the tentacles would be quite right, if I judge the picture correctly. You might be on to something, Kat! Konda likely grows to an impressive ML of 1.15 meters; that's half an Architeuthis...

Regarding scale, there appear to be three standards to go by: the diameter of the line, the diameter of the weight, or, more a "soft" measure, the length of the lure, which I think could be a herring size... Now, for information on available line thicknesses and those most commonly used....
 
OB,
Be careful with the line thickness. When we adopted our 10 year old Chilean son we measured the wood flooring planks in a photograph to try to determine his height (and clothing size). Using US standard flooring strips, he would have been over 6' tall. At 31 he has not reached 5' 2" :biggrin2:
 

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