THE KRAKEN awoke in 2003. Fishers dragged a huge female squid from the Ross Sea off Antarctica. With a body, or mantle, 2.5 metres long, it was the largest squid yet recorded. And it was still a juvenile.
The specimen was not the giant squid of lore, known as
The female squid is also the first large squid ever to be caught swimming at the ocean surface, proving that the beasts are not just creatures of the abyss. Having died while being hauled aboard a ship in April, the squid is now preserved on ice at Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand.
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