A Shell Oil robot filming a mile and a half under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico captured something surprising: a bizarre, alien-like creature with extremely long, elbowed tentacles. It was a rare sighting of the Magnapinna squid, which remains largely a mystery to science. The video was taken on November 11th at the Shell ‘Perdido’ oil drilling site, about 200 miles off the coast of Houston, Texas.
From National Geographic:
Based on analysis of videos not unlike the one captured at the Perdido site, scientists know that the adult Magnapinna observed to date range from 5 to 23 feet (1.5 to 7 meters) long, Vecchione said. By contrast, the largest known giant squid measured about 16 meters (52 feet) long.
And whereas giant squid and other cephalopods have eight short arms and two long tentacles, Magnapinna has ten indistinguishable appendages that all appear to be the same length.
“The most peculiar structure is that of the arms,” said deep-sea biologist Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.
Referring to the way the tentacles hang down from elbow-like kinks, Robison said: “Judging from that structure, we think the animal feeds by dragging its arms and the ends of its tentacles along the seafloor as it drifts slowly above it.”
The Perdido site is one of the deepest oil drilling sites in the world. Experts don’t think the Magnapinna squid’s presence there has any expert significance, and some are actually aligning with the oil industry in the hopes of capturing more rare deep-sea footage. Marine biologists are eager to use the high-tech oil industry ROV (remotely operated vehicle) technology.
That seems like a bad idea, doesn’t it? Scientists relying on corporations for important data? According to National Geographic, most sightings of the Magnapinna have come from research vessels, not oil companies. At least one scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is being cautious about it. Squid biologist Michael Vecchione said oil industry collaborations “should not get in the way of purely scientific exploration. We need to be careful about deep-sea conservation.”
Link [National Geographic] + [YouTube]
Photo credit: National Geographic
