It’s rare that we get to cover world firsts in photography and videography.
And, let’s face it, those are typically reserved for some phenomenon in space. That’s not hard to believe with the advent of smartphones and our penchant to document anything and everything around us.
But even with that natural inclination, there are still many things on this Earth that like to remain hidden from view, camera present or not.
The colossal squid is one of those.
This is the first time since the squid was identified 100 years ago that the it was captured on film, the Schmidt Ocean Institute told news outlet ABC. Not only is that a pretty long run, but also speaks to the squid’s furtive nature as well as how little we know about how it lives.
An underwater drone with a camera captured the juvenile squid which measured nearly one foot long at a depth of 1,100 feet in the ocean.
The expedition's chief scientist and professor at the University of Essex Michelle Taylor told ABC News, “It's very challenging to understand the biology, ecology and the behavior of an animal if you've only ever seen dead specimens or on the surface, not in the mid-water area, which is a natural home…You get a real feel for its behavior and how it moves around its natural environment.”
To give you some idea of the size differential between the juvenile caught on film and an adult colossal squid, the latter can grow to 23 feet in length and weigh up to 1,100 pounds, ABC News notes.
You can check out the video over on ABC News if you like. The scientists marveled at the squid footage and took a moment to note that this is yet further evidence of the many wonderful things that we have here on Earth that we have yet to fully catalog and discover.
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