Photographer Spots 10-Foot-Long Preserved Giant Squid Floating Off the Tenerife Coast

Off the coast of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, a preserved giant squid was recently discovered by a photographer floating in the water. The juvenile creature was 10-foot-long.

Naturalist and photographer Teo Lucas discovered the magnificently preserved 440-pound behemoth, which he then brought to the Spanish Institute of Oceanography for additional research.

Jon Ablett, the Natural History Museum in London's senior curator of mollusks and cephalopods, said that the majority of museum and research specimens are in extremely poor condition and frequently missing pieces because they are derived from sperm whale stomach contents or from specimens that have washed up on beaches.

This surprising specimen was nearly completely undamaged. Even its enormous eyes, which are among the biggest eyes in the animal kingdom, were still in their sockets. The tip of one of its tentacles, which seems to have been bitten off by the creature that killed it, was the only piece that was missing.

10-Foot Long Juvenile

The massive mollusk was only a juvenile, according to a Facebook post from SECAC, the Society for the Study of the Cetaceans in the Canary Archipelago, and adults could get much bigger.

Ablett said that Architeuthis dux, the scientific name for giant squid, can grow up to 12 meters long-that's roughly the height of four floors. Although no fully mature specimens have been discovered, it is believed that the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, may grow even larger than the giant squid in terms of mass and length.

Unlikely Giant Squid Info Resource

Despite their enormous size, giant squid species are notoriously difficult to locate, making it challenging to calculate their population.

The best estimate of the population of giant squid comes from an unlikely resource. Ablett added that experts do not believe that giant squid is uncommon, based on population estimates that are projected from the analysis of several sperm whales' stomach content, the primary predator of adult giant squid.

According to a study by Elizabeth Shea and Clyde Rober, sperm whales consume up to 131 million giant squids annually.

Squids can be found in every ocean in the world, but they are hardly ever found in polar or equatorial areas.

Ablett also said that the North Atlantic, the waters off South Africa, the waters off New Zealand, and the waters off Japan are where you can find them most frequently.

The knowledge of this species is relatively minimal because of how elusive they are. The biology of this giant squid could therefore be better understood through examination of Lucas's exquisitely preserved specimen, Newsweek reports.

Elusive Giants

The elusive giant squid's inhospitable deep-sea habitat has made them difficult to document. According to National Geographic, nearly all of what is known about the elusive giant squid comes from beached carcasses or dead specimens that have been reeled in by fishermen because of their unfriendly deep-sea habitat. But recently, the fortunes of researchers into these enigmatic creatures have started to change.

Researchers in Japan captured the first-ever photographs of a live giant squid in 2004. A 24-foot-long female giant squid was caught and later brought to the surface by scientists from Japan's National Science Museum in late 2006.