Living Colossal Squid Filmed for the First Time in the Deep Southern Ocean

For a hundred years, the colossal squid existed mostly as a rumor of the deep — pieced together from beaks found in the stomachs of whales and seabirds, or from dying adults dragged up by fishing lines. No one had ever filmed a living colossal squid in its own home, the cold dark waters surrounding Antarctica. That changed on March 9, 2025, when an expedition team operating the remotely operated vehicle SuBastian from the research vessel Falkor (too) recorded the first confirmed footage of one alive in the wild.

The encounter happened at about 600 meters of depth near the South Sandwich Islands, in the South Atlantic stretch of the Southern Ocean. The squid in the video was not a giant at all but a delicate juvenile, only around 30 centimeters long, with a glassy, almost transparent body. Adults of the species, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, can grow up to seven meters and weigh as much as 500 kilograms, making it the heaviest invertebrate known to science. Seeing one so young, so unguarded, offered a rare glimpse of an early stage of life that had never been witnessed directly.

“No one had ever filmed a living colossal squid in its own home, the cold dark waters surrounding Antarctica.”

Confirming the identification took a coordinated effort. The expedition used a live video link from the ship to invite scientists ashore to study the footage in real time. Among them was Dr. Kat Bolstad of Auckland University of Technology, who helped verify the animal by its diagnostic features. "It's exciting to see the first in situ footage of a juvenile colossal and humbling to think that they have no idea that humans exist," she said. Dr. Michelle Taylor of the University of Essex praised the collaboration, noting, "It's incredible that we can leverage the power of the taxonomic community through R/V Falkor (too) telepresence while we are out at sea."

The timing carried a quiet poetry: 2025 marks the 100-year anniversary of the colossal squid's formal naming. The sighting was part of an Ocean Census flagship expedition dedicated to searching for life unknown to science, and it followed another squid sighting on a back-to-back voyage. "The first sighting of two different squids on back-to-back expeditions is remarkable and shows how little we have seen of the magnificent inhabitants of the Southern Ocean," said Dr. Jyotika Virmani, executive director of Schmidt Ocean Institute. More than a spectacular video, the moment is a reminder of how much of our own planet remains genuinely unexplored — and how patient, careful science keeps turning legends into living, breathing knowledge.