Well That’s a First: Giant Squid Sighted in the United States

Capturing something unique and never seen before is the goal of every photographer. So imagine the feeling of victory this photographer must have had when he filmed a giant squid swimming around in US coastal waters for the first time ever. Not only is this animal notoriously difficult to capture on camera, but also they are not known to inhabit waters around the United States…until now.

The giant squid was filmed in the Gulf of Mexico by a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. It was located off of the coasts of Louisiana and Alabama CNN reports. To attract fish like the giant squid, the team used a device called a Medusa which is outfitted with dangling lights to attract large fish. As PetaPixel points out, this is the same device used by Dr. Edie Widder when she took the first video of a giant squid off the coast of Japan back in 2012.

Describing the current discovery, Dr. Widder writes, “W]hat do we know? We found the squid after only five Medusa deployments, despite the fact that thousands of ROV and submersible dives in the Gulf of Mexico have not done so…This suggests that the animal does not like the bright lights of ROVs and that stealth monitoring of the sort possible with the Medusa can allow us to see what has never been seen before.”

Of course, you can watch a video of the whole thing here on YouTube.

The video above was reviewed by the team of scientists to make sure it was legit – such is the rarity of this kind of encounter.

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[PetaPixel, CNN]