Marine biologists have photographed a giant purple and black squid swimming around a sunken ship. The footage was published in the research materials of the OceanX research crew.
Scientists who are mapping the seabed in the Gulf of Aqaba in the northern Red Sea recently made two interesting finds almost simultaneously. They accidentally discovered a sunken shipwreck and a mysterious large squid circling around it. The research is carried out by the marine research organization OceanX.
The sunken ship turned out to be the ferry Pella, which sank in November 2011 – scientists found this out by sending a remotely controlled vehicle (ROV) for reconnaissance. However, it took more time to determine the type of squid. The team used ROVs and submersibles to visit the crash site three times, and each time they saw a huge squid passing by.
After consulting with Michael Vecchione, an invertebrate zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the team finally got the answer – it turned out to be Sthenoteuthis oualaniensis, or a purple-black flying squid. The size of a giant squid exceeds 2 m, usually the body length with tentacles is 50 cm.
According to the Australian Museum, these squids are active predators in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They live in the open ocean at a depth of about 1000 m, but often swim at night and closer to the surface to eat. What’s more, these muscular and fast individuals can travel at 10 km / h (with jerks of up to 35 km / h), according to SeaLifeBase, the international center for marine research.
