NATURE

Eerie Footage Captures Elusive Deep-Sea Squid

Near Australia For The First Time
MICHELLE STARR 11 NOVEMBER 2020

The big n squid (Magnapinna) is one of the most elusive creatures that we
know.

It dwells in the permanently dark depths of the ocean and is an extremely

rare sight, with only around a dozen con rmed spottings worldwide.

Now, for the rst time, big n squids have been seen o the coast of
Australia not once, but ve times - and each sighting was a di erent
individual. It's not enough to call the region a Magnapinna hotspot, but the
new observations have revealed new behaviours, underlining the
importance of capturing images of deep-sea life in its natural habitat.
"These sightings, the rst from Australian waters, have bolstered the
hypothesis of a cosmopolitan distribution, and indicated a locally clustered
distribution with squid being found in close spatial and temporal proximity
of each other," the researchers wrote in their paper.

Big n squids are strange and eldritch beasties. Their bodies look fairly
typical for a squid, although with much larger ns than is usual. But their
arms and tentacles are truly peculiar, tipped with surprisingly long
laments, making the limbs reach lengths of over 8 metres (26 feet), many
times longer than the squid's body. Held out at an angle perpendicular to
the body, the limbs also give it a strange 'elbowed' appearance.

Because they live in the bathypelagic zone, between 1,000 and 4,000
metres (3,280 and 13,120 feet) deep, it's not easy for us to study these
squids. At this ocean depth, sunlight never penetrates, and the pressure of
the water is crushing.

However, remotely operated vehicles can go where humans fear to tread,

and over the last couple of decades, sightings have gradually trickled in.

It was just such equipment that marine scientists were using to explore
deep waters o the southern coast of Australia. In a region known as the
Great Australian Bight, where almost nothing was known about the deep-
sea fauna, scientists deployed remotely operated vehicles and a towed
camera o the Marine National Facility's research vessel Investigator as
part of an intensive research program to catalogue the life far beneath the
waves.

Rare big n squid seen off the coast of Australia for the rst time
On ve separate occasions, big n squids showed up in the images
obtained by the instruments.

The towed camera caught two squids, lming them for four seconds each
at 2,110 and 2,178 metres, at one site in November 2015. The two sightings
were around 12 hours apart.

The ROV spotted three squids at another site in March 2017 at 3,002, 3,056
and 3,060 metres below the surface. Because the ROV is more exible, it
was able to follow the squids, capturing longer video of each one; the
longest was just under three minutes. All three sightings occurred within a
25-hour time period.

Morphological measurements with paired lasers suggested that each of

the ve squid sightings was a separate individual.
 Magnapinna lmed at 3,056 metres. (Osterhage et al., PLOS One, 2020)

"These sightings represent the rst records of Magnapinna squid in

Australian waters, and they more than double the known records from the
southern hemisphere," the researchers wrote in their paper.

Even so, the sightings were rare: the survey spanned over 350 kilometres
of the Great Australian Bight, and recorded 75 hours' worth of video. The
beasties were only seen at those two locations in those two timeframes.
"All Magnapinna sp. sightings in the Great Australian Bight were made in
areas of predominantly soft sediment, in terrain of lower-slope erosion
channels, and upper section of submarine canyon," the researchers wrote.

"Submarine canyons and similar incised features often support high

productivity and diversity in the deep-sea, and these locations may re ect
habitat preference of Magnapinna sp."

Although the sightings were short, they still yielded observations of some
of the squids' behaviours. There was, of course, the characteristic 'elbow'
pose with the tentacles extended outwards, then bent at an almost 90-
degree angle. Previously, this had mostly been observed while the squid
was vertical, but the new footage showed this pose in the horizontal
position.

Because the tentacles appear to be quite sticky, this could be a feeding

behaviour, waiting for some hapless creature to bump into the long limbs
like a bug into ypaper, but we still don't have enough information to
determine this for sure.

Another behaviour the team observed was the squid holding one arm
perpendicular to its body while it moved from a horizontal into an upright
position. This is similar to the dorsal arm curl movement seen in a number
of squids, but why the big n squids do it is still a mystery.

In an entirely new behaviour, the researchers also saw one of the squids
coiling its laments close to its body. Previously, the only cephalopod seen
doing something similar was the distantly related Vampyroteuthis
infernalis, another bathypelagic creature that uses its laments for feeding.

"Whilst there are obvious di erences between the lamentous

appendages of V. infernalis and Magnapinna squid .. it may be that coiling
behaviour represents an e cient biomechanical solution to the retraction
of such long, thin laments," the researchers wrote.
It's fascinating, tantalising stu - new information that highlights just how
little we know about these strange, silent creatures and the deep, dark
underwater world they inhabit.

The research has been published in PLOS One.