List of giant squid specimens and sightings (2001–2014)

It includes animals that were caught by fishermen, found washed ashore, recovered (in whole or in part) from sperm whales and other predatory species, as well as those reliably sighted at sea.

The beginning of the 21st century marked a turning point in humanity's understanding of the life habits of the giant squid, as it ushered in the first visually documented and incontrovertible observations of live animals, both adult and paralarval.

[4] The quest to photograph or film a live giant squid—mooted since at least the 1960s[nb 2]—had begun in earnest in the 1980s and intensified significantly in the following decade, with several multi-million-dollar expeditions launched in the late 1990s.

Though the total number of recorded giant squid specimens now runs into the hundreds, the species remains notoriously elusive and little known, and has retained its status as a "quasi-mythical" animal.

[29] Efforts continued until at least 1990; at one point, a "gigantic squid jig, painted bright red and outfitted with numerous hooks" was trialled,[23] as was "hundreds of pounds" of raw tuna,[30] but all attempts proved unsuccessful.

[23] A photograph purporting to show a live Architeuthis dux alongside a diver was published in the 1993 book European Seashells,[31] but this turned out to be a sick or dying Onykia robusta[32] (misidentification #[7]).

"[17] After years of planning, a series of further expeditions aimed at capturing footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat were mounted in the late 1990s,[33] but all were unsuccessful.

[44] Marine writer and artist Richard Ellis joined the first of the New Zealand expeditions and, in 1998, released a popular nonfiction book, The Search for the Giant Squid, further raising interest in the pursuit of a live animal.

[46] In February 2001, a team led by Steve O'Shea and also including Malcolm Clarke and Chung Cheng Lu succeeded in capturing the first footage of a live giant squid when they caught and filmed several paralarval individuals measuring 9–13 mm (0.35–0.51 in) in total length (#444).

[49] This milestone was followed by the first images of a live adult giant squid (at the surface) on 15 January 2002, near Goshiki beach in Amino-cho, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan (#464).

[59] It initially employed a trio of autonomous underwater camera rigs connected to buoys at the surface, with adjustable visible and infrared lights and a combination of acoustic and optical lures.

[65] In 1980, Robison had come close to catching a live adult specimen when, also in Californian waters, he pulled up a freshly severed tentacle (#246), complete with "grasping" suckers.

[66] It was only on 30 September 2004 that a live giant squid was photographed in its natural deep-water habitat, off the Ogasawara Islands, by Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori (#492), the culmination of an effort that spanned three years and 26 week-long expeditions.

The images provided a unique insight into the feeding habits of the giant squid and suggested that it was a far more active predator than had previously been thought; the findings were published in the 22 December 2005 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[nb 10] The animal was caught on a baited hook at 650 m (2,130 ft) depth and pulled to the surface, where it was recorded waving its arms and ejecting large volumes of water from its funnel.

[78] Around this time, Steve O'Shea joined an expedition to the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) organised by a team of shark experts and anglers led by Chris Fischer that likewise aimed to film a giant squid in the wild,[79] despite the species having never been recorded there.

[84] In 2012, a team including Natacha Aguilar de Soto of the University of La Laguna lowered a camera to a depth of 200–800 m (660–2,600 ft) off El Hierro, Canary Islands, in the hopes of filming a giant squid, but to no avail.

The elusive footage was finally captured in July 2012 by a team comprising Kubodera, O'Shea and Edith Widder, after more than 285 hours underwater and 55 submersible dives.

Initially, black-and-white video of a live giant squid (#548) was recorded on 1 July 2012[91][nb 11] at a depth of around 700 m (2,300 ft) from a "Medusa" remote camera system, which was suspended from a buoy at the surface.

[96] In July of the same year it appeared in a special episode of the BBC series Natural World, titled "Giant Squid: Filming The Impossible", which was adapted from the NHK documentary.

"[98] Since the 2012 milestone, live giant squid have been photographed and filmed at the surface on a number of occasions, mostly in Japanese waters (#564, 569, 606, 613, 614, 615, 618, 626, 630, 635, 637, 639, 644, 659, 669, 673, and 677)—the majority of these as part of the mass appearance event in the Sea of Japan between January 2014 and March 2015[102]—but also off Spain (#648) and South Africa (#650).

[100] The squid was apparently swimming normally when a local diving shop owner dove alongside it, and after a few hours of being filmed in a harbour the animal was guided back into the open ocean.

In August 2013, Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen announced an Evonik Industries–backed project to film a fully intact adult giant squid in its natural habitat off the Azores and thereby determine how the species uses its long tentacles (missing in the 2012 specimen) for feeding.

[110] In September 2018, it was reported that Tsunemi Kubodera was to "hunt" giant squid in Toyama Prefecture, Japan, in January–February 2019 for a documentary about his work on the species by filmmaker Shinichi Motoki.

[111] Another video of a live giant squid in its natural deep-water habitat (#664)—reported at the time as the second ever recorded—was captured in the Gulf of Mexico at 759 m (2,490 ft) depth in June 2019 by a NOAA-funded team that included Widder and marine biologists Nathan J. Robinson and Sönke Johnsen.

It seemed to track the up-and-down motion of the camera rig prior to striking, indicating that giant squid are primarily visual predators that actively stalk their prey.

[113] It subsequently came to light that a seven-second clip of a live giant squid (#654)—little publicised initially[114]—had been captured in October 2017, off the southern coast of El Hierro in the Canary Islands at around 500 m (1,600 ft) depth, making the Gulf of Mexico video the third such recording.