A Japanese research team has succeeded in filming a giant squid live — possibly for the first time — and says the elusive creatures may be more plentiful than previously believed, a researcher said Friday.

The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo earlier this month. The squid, which measured about 24-feet long, died while it was being caught.

“We believe this is the first time anyone has successfully filmed a giant squid that was alive,” said Kubodera, a researcher with Japan’s National Science Museum. “Now that we know where to find them, we think we can be more successful at studying them in the future.”
Giant squid, formally called Architeuthis, are the world’s largest invertebrates. Because they live in the depths of the ocean, they have long been wrapped in mystery and embellished in the folklore of sea monsters, appearing in ancient Greek myths or attacking the submarine in Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

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Being the science nerd that I am, this is pretty exciting news to me. Though I think the squid looks more like the clumsy puppets they used in low-budget sci-fi movies than the CGI invertebrates they’re able to make in newer movies, like Pirates of the Caribbean. And for all you calamari-lovers, they say the squid is most likely not endangered. There’s a video at the source.