April 19, 2025 • 7 mins
World-first video footage of the elusive colossal squid has been captured by US researchers.
It lives in the deep Antarctic waters, can reach up to seven metres in length, and weighs up to 500 kilograms.
Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remote drone filmed a baby colossal squid alive 600 metres down in its environment for the first time.
AUT Associate Professor and squid expert Dr Kat Bolstad says this is a very 'exciting' development.
"We've been studying these animals, we've known about them for a century - personally, I've been studying them for over 20 years."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks atb.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It has been one hundred years since the discovery of
the colossal squid, an enormous invertebrate that straddles the line
between legend and reality, and this week, for the first
time ever, we got to see footage of a colossal
squid alive in its natural environment. The footage was captured
in the South Atlantic Ocean near the remote South Sandwich
Islands by a team from the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and
(00:34):
it was a Kiwi who verified that what we are
witnessing is in fact a colossal squid. Associate professor at
Auckland University of Technology and squid expert, a doctor kat
ball Star is with me now, Good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Kyoda, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hey, how did you react when you saw this footage?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Oh, we're hugely exciting, of course. I mean, we've been
studying these animals. We've known about them for a century. Personally,
I've been studying them for over twenty years, and of
course in all that time, mostly what we get to
see are dead specimens, which are also exciting in their
own way. But you know, nothing on seeing the live animal,
which now the world can share in.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
So when you saw it, did you immediately recognize it
from just being able to, you know, examine and investigate deed.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Species, so I knew what to look for. It was
quite clearly a glass squid, So that's what we call
the family, and if you look at the footage you
can see exactly why they're called glass squids. But in
the Antarctic there are three species, and so it was
a matter of checking which particular features this one had,
and some of those features were not visible initially in
(01:41):
the version of the footage that I saw, so I
had to wait for the high res version. But once
we got a good look at that, it was clear
that the features that would confirm that this was a
colossal squid were there.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And what will those features?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Kate?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So people who know anything about the colossal squid probably
have heard about the hooks that it has. Quite a
few different squids have those, but the colossal has them
in a unique arrangement. So squid have two long tentacles
and eight shorter arms. Those arms have suckers and or
hooks all the way along their length, and then the
tentacles have those things grouped right at the end in
(02:15):
two clusters what we call the tentacle clubs. So we
know that the colossal squid has got pretty impressive swiveling
hooks on the ends of those two long tentacles. Those
were clearly visible in the footage. That narrowed it down
to one of two species. And then the colossal squid
also has a unique setup where in the middle of
the arms it has hooks and those hooks are flanked
on either side by suckers near the mouth and toward
(02:36):
the arm tips. And that was what I needed to
confirm on the high rest footage. Those were there. They
were clearly visible once we had that higher resolution footage,
and that confirmed that this was a colossal squid.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So are the hooks Are they just another way for
the squid to be able to catch food or are they.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Well Once an animal evolves a particular feature, if it
can use them in multiple ways, that's even stronger selection
pressure to keep that feature. So it's great if it's
useful for one thing, which you know probably they they
have quite a significant role in feeding, but they may
be helpful for defense as well. The sperm whale is
one of the colossal squid's major predators and large sperm
(03:16):
whales that have been feeding in the Antarctic often have
sets of parallel scratches on their heads that very closely
match the spacing of those hooks on the tentacle clubs.
And then in some squid. Probably shouldn't go into this
in a family show on a Sunday morning, but some
squid also use them in reproduction. But that's a different
story for a different day.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Okay, don't worry, the imagination is running now. I think
it was this particular squid on the footage.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
This one was. It was not quite what we would
call a baby, but certainly a young individual, probably about
thirty centimeters.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Okay, so it's not colossal yet.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Right, It will become colossal, and you know, colossal is
the common name for this species, in the same way
that we would call something, you know, an orange ruffy
or a common dolphin. So it will become colossal. But
of course we all start out small, and so that's
the case here as well.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And Kat, how long does that take for it to
become fully.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Well, that's a great question. We do not fully understand
the lifespan of a lot of deep sea squid species
because you can't keep them in tanks and sort of
check how long it takes them to grow to certain sizes.
They do have certain structures in the body that have
growth rings, and so one of those structures is the beak,
and recently someone calculated based on the growth rings in
(04:31):
the beak that the maximum lifespan might be about five
point two years. That's quite long for acephalopod, but it's
also a very fast growth rate for such a large animal,
but it is plausible. The trouble is it's hard to
verify how often those growth rings are laid down, So
that's based on the growth rings being laid down daily.
Will if it would turn out that those rings are
(04:52):
not on a daily basis, then that changes that estimate.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Do we know why colossal squid are transparent when young
and eventually turn white, so.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
They probably One of the things that's nice about this
footage is we can see how transparent it is, but
it also has visible color cells or chromatophors, which it
can open and close to change, probably to change its
appearance between opaque and transparent. It probably becomes less transparent
as it's older, but the younger animals are actually living
up in the shallower waters, and so one of the
really common forms of camouflage in the surface layers and
(05:25):
the slightly deeper layers where there's still enough light to
see by, is to have a transparent body so that
you don't have to hide yourself by looking like something
else or camouflaging. Your predators just look through you. And
so this animal is still in a stage where that
is probably advantageous. So this is an expedition partner between
Schmid Ocean Institute and Ocean Sensus, which is an international
(05:49):
organization that's trying to help us accelerate the rate of
which we discover new marine species, because we know there
are hundreds of thousands of species left in the ocean
that humans don't know about yet, and in order to
understand these ecosystems properly, we need to get those described.
Know that we're using the same name for the same
types of an animals. So this expedition was actually looking
for new species and new habitats around the South Sandwich Islands.
(06:12):
They were not specifically looking for squids or the colossal squid,
although plenty of teams you know, have that as one
of their goals. So they actually just happened to be
in the right place at the right time. They have
had a lot of presence in the Antarctic this season.
This is their third voyage down in the region, and
certainly with the technology they have and the amount of
time they're spending in the deep sea, I think it's
(06:33):
great that they were the ones to get this footage
because they've put in a lot of effort into deep
sea exploration, and also they're sharing it in real time
with everyone, so you can actually be sitting in your
office at home and watching with just a few seconds
delay exactly what they're doing. So anyone who happened to
be watching at the time actually shared in seeing the
first footage of the colossal squid that we've ever confirmed,
(06:54):
which is pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, it's amazing. Hey, is there any chance that they
could be in New Zealand waters?
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Very unlikely. If so, they would be in the extreme
far south. So there were what we considered to be
an Antarctic endemic species, so that only live in the Antarctic.
Where exactly the borders are of that body of water
depends worldwide and on the season and a few other things.
We certainly have giant squid in our waters, which are
a completely different species, but we have not had any
(07:21):
confirmation that we have colossal even in the far reaches
of our southern eased.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Okay, really good to talk to you. That was cat
Bolstered there. Doctor cat Bolstered, Associate professor at Ugland University
of Technology. She's a squid expert and she was the
one that was able to identify what they captured on
film there.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks atb.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It has been one hundred years since the discovery of
the colossal squid, an enormous invertebrate that straddles the line
between legend and reality, and this week, for the first
time ever, we got to see footage of a colossal
squid alive in its natural environment. The footage was captured
in the South Atlantic Ocean near the remote South Sandwich
Islands by a team from the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and
(00:34):
it was a Kiwi who verified that what we are
witnessing is in fact a colossal squid. Associate professor at
Auckland University of Technology and squid expert, a doctor kat
ball Star is with me now, Good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Kyoda, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hey, how did you react when you saw this footage?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Oh, we're hugely exciting, of course. I mean, we've been
studying these animals. We've known about them for a century. Personally,
I've been studying them for over twenty years, and of
course in all that time, mostly what we get to
see are dead specimens, which are also exciting in their
own way. But you know, nothing on seeing the live animal,
which now the world can share in.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
So when you saw it, did you immediately recognize it
from just being able to, you know, examine and investigate deed.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Species, so I knew what to look for. It was
quite clearly a glass squid, So that's what we call
the family, and if you look at the footage you
can see exactly why they're called glass squids. But in
the Antarctic there are three species, and so it was
a matter of checking which particular features this one had,
and some of those features were not visible initially in
(01:41):
the version of the footage that I saw, so I
had to wait for the high res version. But once
we got a good look at that, it was clear
that the features that would confirm that this was a
colossal squid were there.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And what will those features?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Kate?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So people who know anything about the colossal squid probably
have heard about the hooks that it has. Quite a
few different squids have those, but the colossal has them
in a unique arrangement. So squid have two long tentacles
and eight shorter arms. Those arms have suckers and or
hooks all the way along their length, and then the
tentacles have those things grouped right at the end in
(02:15):
two clusters what we call the tentacle clubs. So we
know that the colossal squid has got pretty impressive swiveling
hooks on the ends of those two long tentacles. Those
were clearly visible in the footage. That narrowed it down
to one of two species. And then the colossal squid
also has a unique setup where in the middle of
the arms it has hooks and those hooks are flanked
on either side by suckers near the mouth and toward
(02:36):
the arm tips. And that was what I needed to
confirm on the high rest footage. Those were there. They
were clearly visible once we had that higher resolution footage,
and that confirmed that this was a colossal squid.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So are the hooks Are they just another way for
the squid to be able to catch food or are they.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Well Once an animal evolves a particular feature, if it
can use them in multiple ways, that's even stronger selection
pressure to keep that feature. So it's great if it's
useful for one thing, which you know probably they they
have quite a significant role in feeding, but they may
be helpful for defense as well. The sperm whale is
one of the colossal squid's major predators and large sperm
(03:16):
whales that have been feeding in the Antarctic often have
sets of parallel scratches on their heads that very closely
match the spacing of those hooks on the tentacle clubs.
And then in some squid. Probably shouldn't go into this
in a family show on a Sunday morning, but some
squid also use them in reproduction. But that's a different
story for a different day.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Okay, don't worry, the imagination is running now. I think
it was this particular squid on the footage.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
This one was. It was not quite what we would
call a baby, but certainly a young individual, probably about
thirty centimeters.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Okay, so it's not colossal yet.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Right, It will become colossal, and you know, colossal is
the common name for this species, in the same way
that we would call something, you know, an orange ruffy
or a common dolphin. So it will become colossal. But
of course we all start out small, and so that's
the case here as well.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And Kat, how long does that take for it to
become fully.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Well, that's a great question. We do not fully understand
the lifespan of a lot of deep sea squid species
because you can't keep them in tanks and sort of
check how long it takes them to grow to certain sizes.
They do have certain structures in the body that have
growth rings, and so one of those structures is the beak,
and recently someone calculated based on the growth rings in
(04:31):
the beak that the maximum lifespan might be about five
point two years. That's quite long for acephalopod, but it's
also a very fast growth rate for such a large animal,
but it is plausible. The trouble is it's hard to
verify how often those growth rings are laid down, So
that's based on the growth rings being laid down daily.
Will if it would turn out that those rings are
(04:52):
not on a daily basis, then that changes that estimate.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Do we know why colossal squid are transparent when young
and eventually turn white, so.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
They probably One of the things that's nice about this
footage is we can see how transparent it is, but
it also has visible color cells or chromatophors, which it
can open and close to change, probably to change its
appearance between opaque and transparent. It probably becomes less transparent
as it's older, but the younger animals are actually living
up in the shallower waters, and so one of the
really common forms of camouflage in the surface layers and
(05:25):
the slightly deeper layers where there's still enough light to
see by, is to have a transparent body so that
you don't have to hide yourself by looking like something
else or camouflaging. Your predators just look through you. And
so this animal is still in a stage where that
is probably advantageous. So this is an expedition partner between
Schmid Ocean Institute and Ocean Sensus, which is an international
(05:49):
organization that's trying to help us accelerate the rate of
which we discover new marine species, because we know there
are hundreds of thousands of species left in the ocean
that humans don't know about yet, and in order to
understand these ecosystems properly, we need to get those described.
Know that we're using the same name for the same
types of an animals. So this expedition was actually looking
for new species and new habitats around the South Sandwich Islands.
(06:12):
They were not specifically looking for squids or the colossal squid,
although plenty of teams you know, have that as one
of their goals. So they actually just happened to be
in the right place at the right time. They have
had a lot of presence in the Antarctic this season.
This is their third voyage down in the region, and
certainly with the technology they have and the amount of
time they're spending in the deep sea, I think it's
(06:33):
great that they were the ones to get this footage
because they've put in a lot of effort into deep
sea exploration, and also they're sharing it in real time
with everyone, so you can actually be sitting in your
office at home and watching with just a few seconds
delay exactly what they're doing. So anyone who happened to
be watching at the time actually shared in seeing the
first footage of the colossal squid that we've ever confirmed,
(06:54):
which is pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, it's amazing. Hey, is there any chance that they
could be in New Zealand waters?
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Very unlikely. If so, they would be in the extreme
far south. So there were what we considered to be
an Antarctic endemic species, so that only live in the Antarctic.
Where exactly the borders are of that body of water
depends worldwide and on the season and a few other things.
We certainly have giant squid in our waters, which are
a completely different species, but we have not had any
(07:21):
confirmation that we have colossal even in the far reaches
of our southern eased.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Okay, really good to talk to you. That was cat
Bolstered there. Doctor cat Bolstered, Associate professor at Ugland University
of Technology. She's a squid expert and she was the
one that was able to identify what they captured on
film there.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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