Has Anyone Filmed a Live Giant Squid? First Sightings

Why was the giant squid so hard to film?

For centuries the giant squid was known only from dead or dying animals that washed ashore, floated to the surface or were found in the stomachs of sperm whales. By the end of the 20th century, it was one of the very few large animals that had never been photographed alive in the wild.

There are several reasons. Giant squid live mainly 300–1,000 m (1,000–3,300 ft) down, in water that is pitch dark and very cold. The ocean at those depths is enormous, the squid are spread thinly through it, and they have no fixed home to return to. Most deep-sea exploration uses submersibles and robots with bright lights and noisy thrusters, and an animal with eyes up to 27 cm (11 in) across may well flee from them long before it is seen. Many expeditions in the 1990s, especially off New Zealand, searched for giant squid without success.

First glimpses at the surface

The first breakthroughs came from squid that were near the surface. In 2001, researchers in New Zealand filmed live giant squid paralarvae, tiny newly hatched young caught in plankton nets. On 15 January 2002, a living adult about 4 m (13 ft) long was found at the surface near a beach in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It was photographed, tied to a quay and died overnight, and it is now preserved at Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science.

2004: the first photos in the deep sea

The first photographs of a live giant squid in its natural habitat were taken on 30 September 2004 by Tsunemi Kubodera of Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association. Their teams had spent years searching the waters off the Ogasawara Islands, about 970 km (600 miles) south of Tokyo, a place where sperm whales were known to hunt. By following the whales, they worked out where and how deep the squid were likely to be.

They lowered a baited line with an automatic camera and flash to about 900 m (3,000 ft). A giant squid about 8 m (26 ft) long attacked the bait and caught one tentacle on a hook. Over more than four hours, the camera took over 500 photos of it before the squid broke free, leaving behind a 5.5 m (18 ft) piece of tentacle. DNA tests confirmed that it was a giant squid, and the results were published in 2005 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

2006: the first video of a live adult

On 4 December 2006, Kubodera’s team filmed a live adult giant squid for the first time. They caught a giant squid on a baited line near the Ogasawara Islands and recorded it as it was hauled up beside their boat, but the squid died during the capture.

In November 2006, an expedition to the Gulf of California filmed what was claimed to be a giant squid, using a camera attached to a Humboldt squid, and the footage later aired on television. The identification was never confirmed, and the diver who led the expedition later distanced himself from the program.

2012: filmed in its natural habitat

The first video of a giant squid swimming freely in the deep sea was recorded in July 2012, again off the Ogasawara Islands. The expedition, run by Japan’s public broadcaster NHK and the Discovery Channel, worked from the research ship Alucia and used small crewed submersibles. The scientists on board included Kubodera, the New Zealand squid expert Steve O’Shea and the American deep-sea biologist Edith Widder.

The team tried new, quieter methods. Widder used an electronic lure, the “e-jelly,” that imitates the glowing alarm display of a deep-sea jellyfish, a signal that may attract large predators. A small diamond squid was also offered as bait. From a submersible, Kubodera watched and filmed a giant squid about 3 m (10 ft) long as it fed on the bait for about 23 minutes. Its two long feeding tentacles were missing, possibly lost in an earlier attack. The footage was broadcast in January 2013.

2019: the Gulf of Mexico video

On 19 June 2019, during a NOAA-funded expedition called Journey into Midnight, Edith Widder and Nathan Robinson filmed a young giant squid in the Gulf of Mexico, about 160 km (100 miles) southeast of New Orleans. They used a camera system called the Medusa, which films with dim red light that deep-sea animals are thought to be unable to see, together with the e-jelly lure.

The squid appeared at a depth of about 759 m (2,490 ft), approached the lure, reached for it with its arms and then retreated. Michael Vecchione, a NOAA Fisheries zoologist and squid expert, confirmed that it was a giant squid between 3 and 3.7 m (10–12 ft) long. It was the first giant squid ever filmed alive in US waters.

Other sightings since 2012

Live giant squid are now seen occasionally near the surface, most often in Japan in winter. Most of these animals are sick or dying, having drifted up from the deep. On 24 December 2015, a young giant squid about 3.7 m (12 ft) long entered the harbor of Toyama in Japan; it was filmed by a diver, who then guided it back toward open water. In 2016 a tourist photographed a giant squid alive near the shore of Galicia, Spain, shortly before it died.

The giant squid’s heavier Antarctic relative proved even harder to find. The first confirmed video of a living colossal squid, a juvenile about 30 cm (12 in) long, was recorded only in March 2025 near the South Sandwich Islands, at about 600 m (2,000 ft). The two species are compared in giant squid vs colossal squid.

What did the footage reveal?

The photos and videos changed how scientists see the giant squid. An older idea held that it was a sluggish drifter that waited for food to float by. The 2004 photographs showed it attacking bait aggressively, and the 2012 and 2019 videos showed a powerful, curious animal that approached lures and handled prey with its arms. The success of the e-jelly also suggests that giant squid are drawn to flashes of bioluminescence, perhaps because they signal prey.

The films also showed how much is still unknown. Scientists have never watched a giant squid mate, lay eggs or hunt in the wild, and the size records still rest mostly on dead specimens, as described in how big is a giant squid? In 2004 it was the giant squid’s main enemy, the sperm whale, that led researchers to the squid’s hunting grounds, a reminder of how much is still to be learned about the deep-sea animals that share its dark world.