By NAOYUKI MORI/ Staff Writer
January 25, 2023 at 17:44 JST
TOYOOKA, Hyogo Prefecture—Two scuba divers captured rare photos and video of a giant squid slowly plodding along off the coast here and unusually close to the surface.
Giant squids are one of the largest invertebrates known and live in the deep sea, but many aspects of their lives remain a mystery, and it is incredibly rare for humans to see them up close.
Tsutomu Yoda, a 46-year-old fishing equipment shop owner living in Toyooka, was on a boat near a port in the city around 4 p.m. on Jan. 6 when he spotted the large squid thrashing its tentacles around near the surface of the sea.
He quickly phoned Miki Tanaka, a 34-year-old diving instructor who also lives in Toyooka, to alert her of the creature’s presence.
She and her husband, Yosuke, dived into the sea around 4:30 p.m. that day and saw the roughly 2.5-meter-long giant squid swimming at a slow pace.
They approached close enough to be able to touch the squid with their hands so that Yosuke could photograph it while Miki took video.
But Yosuke said they also kept their distance. He said he wanted to ensure he was not too close to the squid’s tentacles because they were very thick and looked dangerous.
“It had very big, powerful eyes and suckers, too,” he said.
Tsunemi Kubodera, 71, an honorary researcher at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, was the first ever in the world to successfully shoot video of a living giant squid in 2006.
Kubodera said giant squids live around three years at most, and that the giant squid spotted in Toyooka is probably 1 to 2 years old.
Experts believe giant squids usually live at a depth of 600 to 1,000 meters, where the water temperature is 4 to 10 degrees.
But this time, the giant squid was spotted at a depth of around 5 meters, where the water temperature was about 13 degrees.
“I think the squid moved to the relatively warm sea near the coast to escape from the cold winter seawater,” Kubodera said. “The squid looked very weak in the video. I assume it won’t survive for long.”
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The giant squid spotted off the coast of Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture, on Jan. 6 (Provided by T-style)
