In October 2020, there was a remote-controlled deep-sea vessel that got surprised by a sizeable sea creature when it was investigating a shipwreck in the Red Sea. This was around 2,800 feet below the surface.
There are still so many speculations that nothing can be said with certainty about the creature. However, it is for sure that the creature had tentacles, but it wasn’t a giant squid. The size of the creature was roughly more than that of a regular human being. This has given birth to intrigue among researchers and once again reestablished that this planet has so many layers that a large part of it is still unknown to man.
At first, the vessel sensed a “this little, tiny anomaly on the map,” recalls Mattie Rodrigue, science program lead at OceanX, in a recently posted video. It then turned out to be the “Pella,” a ship that sank in 2011 while on the way to an Egyptian port, that stood out in the team’s map of the ocean floor.
OceanX is an initiative that explores the ocean and the life in the water. The OceanXplorer is an advanced exploration vessel that can send Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) down to depths of up to almost 20,000 feet.
“All of a sudden, as we’re looking at the bow of the shipwreck, this massive creature comes into view, takes a look at the [remotely operated underwater vehicle], and curls its entire body around the bow of the wreck,” Rodrigue said in the video.
The team was “frozen in absolute shock,” she added.
After discussing the event with squid expert Mike Vecchione, the team thinks that they may have identified it as a “giant form” of the purple back flying squid. It’s a large squid that can be found in the Indo-Pacific Ocean and particularly in the Red Sea, where there is a “well-known population,” according to the researcher.
But given its size, it’s not a “giant squid” (Architeuthis dux), Vecchione reasoned.
“There’s no actual record of members of that family [of squid] aggregating on a structure like that, so if that’s actually happening, that would be really interesting,” Vecchione said in the video.
