Rare squid seen alive for the first time in the depths of the ocean; see

The deep-sea environments of Earth’s poles are home to mysterious creatures. But finding and identifying these animals can be difficult; some are only known because researchers have found their remains in fishing nets or in the stomachs of seabirds. On Christmas Day last year, the crew of the R/V Falkor, the Schmidt Ocean Institute ’s research vessel, got lucky: They stumbled upon a creature never before seen alive.

This occurred during the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Expedition, an initiative to document climate change in mountains, rainforests and oceans.

The team had planned to land their remotely operated vehicle, SuBastian, in a location known as Powell Basin. However, moving ice floes forced the group to explore the outer edges of the region.

As the submersible descended 2,100 meters, the crew unexpectedly spotted a shadow via the live feed. It was a squid. , a rare species of cephalopod measuring 90 centimeters long and releasing a green cloud of ink.

“It was a beautiful squid,” said deep-sea researcher Andrew Thurber of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was aboard the ship. “You see beauty all the time in the deep ocean, and this was just a classic example of that.”

No squid of that species had ever been seen alive before, as far as the team knew. They followed it for a few minutes and made sure to record it on video, capturing its red coloration and white spots.

“Videos like this get me excited,” said scientist Linsey Sala, who manages the pelagic invertebrate collection at the Scripps Oceanographic Institution and was not involved in the expedition. Discoveries of species like this, she said, “can be very informative about how they live at great depths.”

Unidentified specimens could be in collections around the world, she added, in which case the footage could be useful in revealing what they are.

Previous sightings of this squid species have been limited to individuals caught by fishing vessels and squid remains found in other marine animals, mainly in the Falkland Islands.

"It's always exciting to see live footage of a creature that was previously only known from dead specimens," said deep-sea ecologist Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who was also not involved in the expedition.

For those aboard the ship, the discovery was “pure euphoria,” Thurber said. There was a fever of excitement even before they had properly identified the squid. To verify the species, Thurber and his colleagues sent images captured by the underwater vehicle to taxonomists around the world.

Cephalopod biologist Kat Bolstad of Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand helped identify the animal. The squid's sex and age were difficult to determine, but the unique hook on each tentacle, seen through the images sent to her, confirmed the species was Gonatus antarcticus .

The hooks may be useful for holding and grabbing prey, a trait shared with other squid. The squid also had scratches on its arms and sucker marks on its mantle, possibly from a recent attack by another sea creature.

Deep-sea squid are difficult to find and document. Conducting surveys thousands of feet below the ocean surface is challenging and expensive, and the animals tend to avoid remotely operated vehicles, which are often loud and bright. These vehicles are “aliens of the deep,” Thurber said. “So it’s up to them to come and observe us.”

This wasn’t the first squid to be filmed by SuBastian, the remotely operated vehicle. Earlier this year, the submersible also spotted a colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, a century after the animal was first described in a scientific paper.

But much less is known about the squid Gonatus antarcticus , which lives in the waters of the Southern Ocean and reproduces at depths below 600 meters.

Penguins in the region are known to feed on the Gonatus antarcticus squid—the smaller ones, at least. They are also preyed upon by the colossal squid, which shares the same depths and waters.

The discovery promises to shed light on the lives of squids of the species Gonatus antarcticus and raises even more questions. How far do these squids move? How large is their territory? What do they feed on in the depths? How big can they grow?

"We know so little about this community that there could be all sorts of things going on that we can only speculate about," Robison said.