Giant ink shows up in front of stealth cameras on the Gulf of Mexico

The 4-meter-long squid suddenly wrapped a tentacle around the fake jellyfish, then quickly went away when it realized it was not food.

Researchers from the Journey into Midnight expedition of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) encountered a giant squid in one of the deepest waters in the Gulf of Mexico. While examining the video from the fifth dive of Medusa stealth camera system, researcher Nathan Robinson sees tentacles of giant squid clinging to a fake jellyfish.

Giant ink shows up in front of stealth cameras on the Gulf of Mexico.

"People quickly fast. We immediately knew it was a squid. It was very large, but because it appeared right in front of the lens, we couldn't know exactly how big it was, but it was at least 3 - 3.7 meters long, " shared scientist Sönke Johnsen and Edie Widder.

After searching the subspecies books and exchanging ideas, the team identified this as a giant squid about to mature . About 30 minutes after Nathan saw the squid on the screen, lightning hit the ship. The lightning hit the device antenna but luckily the Medusa computer and the video were not damaged.

After a closer examination of squid specialist Michael Vecchione at NOAA's Marine Fisheries Agency, the team was able to confirm what they had observed."We only found the squid after the fifth dive of Medusa, although there are thousands of remote control vehicles (ROVs) and submersibles in the Gulf of Mexico. Medusa's stealth monitoring will allow us to see things we haven't seen before , ' the researchers shared.

The immature giant squid grabbed the bait as a fake jellyfish.(Video: NOAA).

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