Also known as bigfin squid, because of the large fins that protrude from their mantles, magnapinnids are among the most mysterious squid in the world. From the outline of the creature, Vecchione could tell this was a magnapinnid. Jamieson quickly cut a clip of the footage and some still images, and sent them to Mike Vecchione, a zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution. It was captured on video in the Philippine Trench. Your browser does not support the video element.Įxposed by the light of a submersible, this mysterious magnapinnid lives 6,212 meters below the surface of the sea. It was cruising just above the seabed one and a half kilometers deeper than anyone had ever seen a squid before. On his screen, caught in light cast by the submersible, was a hazy yet recognizable form: a squid. Jamieson rewound and played the short sequence again. The two-person submersible, piloted by Victor Vescovo, the American investor who founded Caladan Oceanic, appeared to have glided past little more than mud-and more mud-on its long journey through the Philippine Trench, which lies 6,200 meters below the surface, east of the Philippines.īut then, for just a few seconds of video, something strange moved in the distance. Once footage from the excursion came in, Alan Jamieson, a deep-sea researcher from the University of Western Australia, sat in his office aboard the expedition ship scrolling through frame after uneventful frame, searching for anything that might be of interest. Though they failed to find the wreck that day, they did find something else. A few days before making their record-setting trip, however, the explorers had carried out another descent to the seafloor, a dive that ended up being a few kilometers off the mark. A team from Caladan Oceanic found the USS Johnston, which sank during an intense naval battle in 1944, to be astoundingly well-preserved, its guns still pointing in the direction of the enemy. ![]() When a team of subsea explorers completed the deepest ever dive to a shipwreck earlier this year, the news was broadcast around the world. Authored byĭecem| 750 words, about 3 minutes Share this article Photo by Solvin Zankl/Nature Picture Library/Science Photo Library Behold, the Deepest-Dwelling Squid Known to Science They went looking for a war wreck 6,000 meters under the sea-and found a squid instead. Recently, a magnapinnid was filmed in the Philippine Trench-the deepest ever sighting of a squid. The individual pictured here is a rare example of a species from the northern Atlantic Ocean. Little is known about most magnapinnid, or bigfin squid, species.
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