devilshalo

Rare giant squid washed up in Australia
Wed Jul 11, 1:59 AM ET

CANBERRA (Reuters) - One of the largest giant squid ever found has washed up on a remote Australian beach, sparking a race against time by scientists to examine the rarely seen deep-ocean creature.

The squid, the mantle or main body of which measured two-meters (6.5 feet) long, was found by a walker late on Tuesday on Ocean Beach, near Strahan, on the western coast of island state Tasmania.

"It's a whopper," Tasmanian Museum senior curator Genefor Walker-Smith told local media on Wednesday. "The main mantle is about one meter across and its total length is about eight meters."

Scientists would take samples from the creature, identified by state parks officials as an Architeuthis, which can grow to more than 10 meters (33 feet) in length and weigh more than 275 kilograms (606 pounds). The Tasmanian animal was 250 kg, Pemberton said.

The tentacles had been badly damaged, so the overall length of the animal could not be determined, a Tasmania Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman said. Park rangers had moved the remains from the water.

Giant squid, once believed to be mythical despite occasional sightings by mariners, feed on fish and other squid. Last year, fishermen off the Falkland Islands caught a complete animal measuring 8.62 meters.

Scientists believe giant squid usually live at ocean depths of between 200-700 meters (660-2,300 ft), relying in part on volleyball-sized eyes, the largest in the animal kingdom.

Scientists said giant squid gathered along Australia's continental shelf in cold mid-winter waters to feed on Grenadier fish. The squid were in turn hunted by sperm whales migrating north from the Southern Ocean.

Japanese ocean researchers captured the first ever pictures of a live giant squid in September 2004 off Japan's Ogasawara Islands at a depth of 900 meters.

devilshalo

UH Researchers To Investigate 'Octosquid'
Thu Jul 5, 9:37 PM ET

Scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa will soon have a chance to investigate a creature that appears to be half squid, half octopus that was found in waters off the Big Island.

It appears that the creature was sucked up in a deep seawater pipeline at the Natural Energy Laboratory Hawaii Authority at Keahole on the Big Island.

The pipeline pumps cold water up from 3,000 feet below sea level. Occasionally deep-sea marine life will get caught in a filter in the line, officials said.

Workers call the latest find an "octosquid." It has the body of a squid and the tentacles of an octopus.

It is being shipped to University of Hawaii Manoa campus for closer evaluation.

Giles

feet, feet... people, screw meters...

kakihara1

They actually figured out that the squid lost two tentacles on it's way up the pipe and that made it look more like an octopus. I guess this is a species that they've known about for a bit but have yet to name.

OldDude

The legal definition of a foot in the United States is 0.3048 m. There is no physical legal standard for the inch, foot or yard; they are just declared fractions of a meter (for which there is a physical standard). We are really metric, but this fact is well concealed from the general public.

devilshalo

Tanzania fishermen catch endangered fish By ALI SULTAN, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jul 16, 1:11 PM ET

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania - Fishermen have caught a rare and endangered fish, the coelacanth, off the coast of the Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar, a researcher said on Monday.

The find makes Zanzibar the third place in Tanzania where fishermen have caught the coelacanth, a heavy-bodied, many-finned fish with a three-lobed tail that was thought extinct until it was caught in 1938 off the coast of South Africa. Since then two types of coelacanth have been caught in five other countries: Comoros, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique, according to African Coelacanth Ecosystem Program.

"Fishermen informed us that they caught a strange fish in their nets. We rushed to Nungwi (the northern reaches of Zanzibar) to find it's a coelacanth, a rare fish thought to have become extinct when it disappeared from fossil records 80 million years ago," said Nariman Jiddawi of the Institute of Marine Sciences, which is part of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania's commercial capital.

Trade in the coelacanth is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

"Zanzibar will join a list of sites of having the rare fish caught in its own waters," said Jiddawi, adding the catch weighed 59.5 pounds and measured 4.4 feet.

Four fishermen caught the fish on Saturday, Jiddawi said.

Mussa Aboud Jume, director of fisheries in Zanzibar, said that the coelacanth will be preserved and put on display at the Zanzibar Museum.

A statement of the Institute of Marine Sciences said that 35 coelacanths have been caught since September 2003 in Mtwara, a southern region of Tanzania, and mostly along the coast of Tanga in Tanzania's north.

Coelacanths are the only living animals to have a fully functional intercranial joint, a division separating the ear and brain from the nasal organs and eye, according to an Institute of Marine Sciences statement.

GoVegan

Those stories always make me laugh (in a way). Yes, Zanzibar should be quite proud that a few of their citizens managed to kill a rare, endangered fish, purely by chance.

ernestrp

I want a fish sandwhich.

Giantrobo

Survival of the fittest.... If yo ass got caught by someone or something more fit, then it sucks to be you.

This is "nature" at work.

I'd say the same thing if a rare fish came out of the water and killed a villager.

Bronkster

I'll wait for the movie.

devilshalo

ben12

JMLEWIS1

Picture of the prehistoric fish from yahoo...

TomOpus

I think I dated her sister....

Green Smurf

It's a sign that the magnetic poles are going to switch, all the sea life that shouldn't be seen.

Save Ferris

You saying they all got eviction notices?

Green Smurf

No, from what I understand it screws up their navigation system in their heads and thats why we are seeing more and more of rare fish and other sea creatures.

Maybe finally we'll see the Lock Ness monster

GoVegan

I wouldn't really equate the inability to avoid a commercial fishing net with a lack of "fitness." Especially when talking about a fish whose species managed to survive for at least 80 million years.

Looking at that picture, I find it hard to believe that thing was alive when it was caught. It looks 80 million years old.

Th0r S1mpson

...and cows eat only vegetables so if you only eat cow you can still call yourself a vegetarian.

Mopower

Or it could be as man advances more of the briny deep is being discovered? Naw, lets go with the half baked pole switch theory. Art Bell seems to love it.

Save Ferris

it could be that habitats at the bottom of the sea are getting devastated by pollution and we'd never know it for sure.

Venusian

or global warming...that seems to be a catch all

Mopower

Until one mutates and attacks us and then Godzilla has to fight it off. AGAIN.

Giantrobo

Nah, Dude. Either you can avoid them, or you can't!!! If you can't, you taken out of the gene pool.

GoVegan