Two miles beneath the surface off central California, a control room full of scientists went from routine seafloor mapping to stunned silence in about three seconds. Researchers aboard MBARI's research vessel David Packard, surveying the Davidson Seamount roughly 80 miles southwest of Monterey, watched a bigfin squid — one of the ocean's strangest and least-seen animals — drift into their remotely operated vehicle's camera lights.
The encounter, during MBARI's "Seamount Hotspots" expedition, marks the first confirmed live sighting of the genus Magnapinna in the northeastern Pacific, and only the second time MBARI's own cameras have caught one in more than 25 years of deep-sea exploration, according to the institute. Fewer than 70 bigfin squid have ever been observed or collected worldwide, making the footage an unusually good look at a creature normally known only from blurry, fleeting video.
"I saw what looked like tentacles coming into the top corner," Olivia Soares Pereira, an MBARI postdoctoral fellow who was piloting the dive, recalled of the moment. "I immediately screamed 'Magnapinna!'" Using the ROV Doc Ricketts' paired lasers, the team measured the animal at roughly 1.25 meters from its body to the tips of its trailing arms, hovering above the seafloor at about 3,277 meters (10,751 feet), according to MBARI's account of the dive.
I was stunned—this is the first confirmed bigfin squid sighting in Monterey Bay.
— Andrew DeVogelaere, research ecologist, NOAA Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Bigfin squid are instantly recognizable once you've seen one: elbowed arms many times longer than their small, torpedo-shaped bodies, trailed like marionette strings as the animal drifts through open water using them, scientists believe, to snag food from the seafloor or passing currents. Their extreme depth range and skittishness around lights have made them nearly impossible to study up close, so most of what's known comes from a handful of video encounters like this one, covered by outlets including ScienceAlert.
MBARI said the footage will be added to the sparse scientific record on the species, and the team plans further seamount surveys in the region in hopes of a repeat encounter — though, given the odds, nobody on board is holding their breath.
