REPORTER: Ben Deacon
'Geronimo' is one of the largest and most powerful yachts ever built. 110 feet long, she's built to handle the roughest conditions on the most remote seas on earth.
But when her skipper, Olivier de Kersauson, was racing her across the Atlantic in 2003, something dramatically slowed her from racing speed to almost a dead stop.
OLIVIER DE KERSAUSON: I thought it was a very big net because the speed had reduced from 21 knots to 13, then to 11.
De Kersauson sent his crew to investigate and his first mate returned with some very strange news.
OLIVIER DE KERSAUSON: He sais come and see because I am already wondering about it, and I come and I see two arms that size average, I mean twice my arm… with big circular things you know, like they have and it was grabbing the rudder.
What De Kersauson claimed to see was a creature so rare and so strange, it has only recently been photographed alive - Architeuthis, The giant squid.
OLIVIER DE KERSAUSON: It was at the very border of a legend for me and since that day, it is not a legend any more, it’s just a goddamn shitty reality because it has a lot of power. The other problem was the squid started to shake the boat.
For centuries sailors have told of sea monsters with massive tentacles but it was only last year that scientists managed to photograph a living Architeuthis.
These remarkable images, captured by a Japanese team, show an 8m giant squid about the size of a bus freeing itself from a hook before returning to the depths.
But still no-one has captured a giant squid alive. At Auckland's University of Technology, internationally renowned squid expert Dr Steve O'Shea has studied giant squid washed up on beaches, and caught in fishing trawls.
DR STEVE O’SHEA, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, AUCKLAND: This would be my 122nd squid I've handled. This particular squid, a fully mature female, probably coming in at around 250kg, caught in a hoki trawl.
Today they're preserving the animal for New Zealand's natural history collection.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Deep down in here, and extending right into the base of the head, is the digestive gland, more often than not, that will rupture, and if that ruptures when we are moving it, we're in big trouble.
This squid was caught at a depth of 500m. The massive change in pressure meant that the animal, like all others caught by fishermen, was dead by the time it reached the surface.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Why don't we give it a move, this is going to be quite tricky. I don't really fancy having 250kg of squid falling on me.
Steve O'Shea has dedicated his life to the study of the giant squid.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: So many tanks here, I get confused sometimes. It's like a treasure trove in here, isn't it! This looks like a humboldt. I didn't know we had anything like that, it's just absolutely monstrous. Where on earth did this come from? I'm talking about this huge squid, you've got it?
Dr O'Shea published his first scientific paper at 15. 30 years later, he's still dazzled by the creatures he studies and shocked by how little we know about them.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Hey, look at the size of this puppy. This is probably one of the largest of these ones, ever. So you've got a fully mature female giant squid, 13m in total length, that's actually grown from 2mm to 13m in 1.5 years, to the best of our knowledge.
Steve's dream has always been to study living Architeuthis and seven years ago, he hatched an improbable plan.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: So what we're trying to do is capture the giant squid, and ongrow them, feed them as much food as we can, and determine exactly how long they are exactly what is their growth rate, try to reconstruct the life cycle of this squid.
His radical idea was not to look for mature squid, which live in the deepest oceans, but to search for baby giant squid, which live in surface waters. Then he could feed the juveniles, no more than a few millimetres long, until they reached giant size.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: When we first started this hair-brained scheme, we were told it's impossible to keep squid alive in captivity, deep sea species of squid. I didn't know that. Well, I didn't believe that.
VOICEOVER: Off the coast of New Zealand, Scientists embark on an incredible journey.
In a very high profile expedition funded by the Discovery Channel, Dr O'Shea spent a month at sea searching for these juveniles.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Now, we found out where the juvenile giant squid live, in the very surface layers. We realised the giant squid were coming into NZ waters to breed, we just put our nets in the water at a time and a place where their eggs would be hatching, and we got 17 of them. What we've got in here is two larvael Architeuthis, one of them's going to swim right around, here he goes, right there. That's the healthiest one that we've had so far.
VOICEOVER: For Steve O'Shea, this moment is a long-time coming.
But his euphoria was short-lived. To get good pictures of the juveniles, for the documentary, a rectangular tank had been made. When the juveniles were placed in the special tanks, disaster struck.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: What we found out since, you know, it was pretty obvious, you put your juvenile giant squid - which cost an astronomical amount of money - into a rectangular tank, and it goes... straight to the bottom of the tank and it's upside down and it's dead within 13 seconds.
If you take that animal out and you put it into a cylindrical tank, then about 30 seconds later it's happily swimming around. So, we killed them with our tanks. And then we put them into polyethylene tanks, polyethylene kills squid. In fact, we basically did everything wrong.
All of Steve's Architeuthis died.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: A couple of years it took me to get over that, having invested two years in something, and then to have someone throw a camera in front of you, when they've died, you feel pretty bad.
Took me two years to get over it. Then I pulled myself together again, and went and got this boat, and now spend a fantastic amount of time out at sea trying to catch that juvenile giant all over again. We're just going to dart straight over there. Now it will get a little bit stroppy in the middle of the harbour but we'll try and find some nice sheltered water for you. Here goes.
The money for Steve's big expeditions has now dried up, but he still spends about 300 days a year out on his boat, mostly alone, continuing his search for juvenile giant squid.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Well this is where I bust my foo-foo valve and I lift this big old net, the good old trusty net that's caught many a giant squid in its time, baby version.
Without a large research vessel, the chance of Steve catching a juvenile giant is pretty slim.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Now you're all hoping I've got a giant squid in here aren't you? I'm hoping I've still got the end of the net. And this is what you catch. Look at this, bloody jellyfish. I've never seen anything like this before.
Sometimes I put the net out, particularly at night, and it comes up glowing. It's really quite, when you're out here by yourself at night, quite romantic, you know - the net comes up glowing. Nobody there to appreciate it.
Nup, thought we had something. I'd like to be able to show you a live squid while we're out here, I'm supposed to be the squid hunter aren't I and I can't even catch one of the things. It's a bit embarrassing really. I often do think about chucking all of this in, and just sitting back in the office, doing my own research. But there's a lot of pressure on us to actually go out and catch this animal, and until someone else does it, I'm going to continue doing it myself. So no, I can't chuck it in just yet.
In the seven years Dr O'Shea's searched for the giant squid, he's become aware of a disturbing trend.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Squid are incredibly good barometers of environmental health. If I go back maybe 10 years I had 23 giant squid in one year, that's how many were caught, that was the intensity of fishing around NZ, and then it tailed right down to one a year.
We sucked a kumara on that one I'm afraid. Ooh, aah, ain't no squid in there.
Dr O'Shea believes the decline in giant squid numbers is due to a new, aggressive form of deep-sea fishing practiced in New Zealand.
With the coastal seafood stocks exhausted, fishermen are turning to bottom trawling, where nets weighted with steel rollers are dragged along the deepest ocean floors.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: In the process of doing so they wipe out centuries-old coral communities, myriad other invertebrate bits and pieces, and exhausted the fish stocks. And what we've seen in New Zealand is that we've systematically trawled the sea floor everywhere, and now there are no fish left in New Zealand waters, so what we are doing is we are moving into international waters.
So, basically, between New Zealand and Australia, what we are left with on the sea floor, down to depths of about 1,200m, is a barren wasteland. This is so beautiful where we are now, but you think that the oceans are fine but they're not. There are no fish here at all, its been fished out we can't even catch a fish today.
Dr O'Shea is becoming increasingly worried that bottom trawling may cause the extinction of many deep sea creatures before we even know they exist.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: There are plenty of other things that we can focus our energies on that are probably far more important than catching and growing up giant squid. Conservation, first and foremost, is what I do do, and we just use the squid and the public's insatiable appetite to learn more about the squid as a hook to draw them into far more important matters like conservation because at the rate we're going we're not going to have giant squid in 10 years.
We have already had about five extinctions of squid and octopus in New Zealand waters already. That's a direct consequence of fishing activity. And these bloody great big nets are doing a very good job of wiping out the giant squid as well.
GEORGE NEGUS: Our giant squid man told Ben Deacon there's an even bigger and much meaner model out there called the colossal squid! And, at an international fisheries conference in Wellington, it was recently revealed that around a third of New Zealand's off-shore waters may soon be off-limits to the dreaded bottom trawlers.
'Geronimo' is one of the largest and most powerful yachts ever built. 110 feet long, she's built to handle the roughest conditions on the most remote seas on earth.
But when her skipper, Olivier de Kersauson, was racing her across the Atlantic in 2003, something dramatically slowed her from racing speed to almost a dead stop.
OLIVIER DE KERSAUSON: I thought it was a very big net because the speed had reduced from 21 knots to 13, then to 11.
De Kersauson sent his crew to investigate and his first mate returned with some very strange news.
OLIVIER DE KERSAUSON: He sais come and see because I am already wondering about it, and I come and I see two arms that size average, I mean twice my arm… with big circular things you know, like they have and it was grabbing the rudder.
What De Kersauson claimed to see was a creature so rare and so strange, it has only recently been photographed alive - Architeuthis, The giant squid.
OLIVIER DE KERSAUSON: It was at the very border of a legend for me and since that day, it is not a legend any more, it’s just a goddamn shitty reality because it has a lot of power. The other problem was the squid started to shake the boat.
For centuries sailors have told of sea monsters with massive tentacles but it was only last year that scientists managed to photograph a living Architeuthis.
These remarkable images, captured by a Japanese team, show an 8m giant squid about the size of a bus freeing itself from a hook before returning to the depths.
But still no-one has captured a giant squid alive. At Auckland's University of Technology, internationally renowned squid expert Dr Steve O'Shea has studied giant squid washed up on beaches, and caught in fishing trawls.
DR STEVE O’SHEA, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, AUCKLAND: This would be my 122nd squid I've handled. This particular squid, a fully mature female, probably coming in at around 250kg, caught in a hoki trawl.
Today they're preserving the animal for New Zealand's natural history collection.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Deep down in here, and extending right into the base of the head, is the digestive gland, more often than not, that will rupture, and if that ruptures when we are moving it, we're in big trouble.
This squid was caught at a depth of 500m. The massive change in pressure meant that the animal, like all others caught by fishermen, was dead by the time it reached the surface.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Why don't we give it a move, this is going to be quite tricky. I don't really fancy having 250kg of squid falling on me.
Steve O'Shea has dedicated his life to the study of the giant squid.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: So many tanks here, I get confused sometimes. It's like a treasure trove in here, isn't it! This looks like a humboldt. I didn't know we had anything like that, it's just absolutely monstrous. Where on earth did this come from? I'm talking about this huge squid, you've got it?
Dr O'Shea published his first scientific paper at 15. 30 years later, he's still dazzled by the creatures he studies and shocked by how little we know about them.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Hey, look at the size of this puppy. This is probably one of the largest of these ones, ever. So you've got a fully mature female giant squid, 13m in total length, that's actually grown from 2mm to 13m in 1.5 years, to the best of our knowledge.
Steve's dream has always been to study living Architeuthis and seven years ago, he hatched an improbable plan.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: So what we're trying to do is capture the giant squid, and ongrow them, feed them as much food as we can, and determine exactly how long they are exactly what is their growth rate, try to reconstruct the life cycle of this squid.
His radical idea was not to look for mature squid, which live in the deepest oceans, but to search for baby giant squid, which live in surface waters. Then he could feed the juveniles, no more than a few millimetres long, until they reached giant size.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: When we first started this hair-brained scheme, we were told it's impossible to keep squid alive in captivity, deep sea species of squid. I didn't know that. Well, I didn't believe that.
VOICEOVER: Off the coast of New Zealand, Scientists embark on an incredible journey.
In a very high profile expedition funded by the Discovery Channel, Dr O'Shea spent a month at sea searching for these juveniles.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Now, we found out where the juvenile giant squid live, in the very surface layers. We realised the giant squid were coming into NZ waters to breed, we just put our nets in the water at a time and a place where their eggs would be hatching, and we got 17 of them. What we've got in here is two larvael Architeuthis, one of them's going to swim right around, here he goes, right there. That's the healthiest one that we've had so far.
VOICEOVER: For Steve O'Shea, this moment is a long-time coming.
But his euphoria was short-lived. To get good pictures of the juveniles, for the documentary, a rectangular tank had been made. When the juveniles were placed in the special tanks, disaster struck.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: What we found out since, you know, it was pretty obvious, you put your juvenile giant squid - which cost an astronomical amount of money - into a rectangular tank, and it goes... straight to the bottom of the tank and it's upside down and it's dead within 13 seconds.
If you take that animal out and you put it into a cylindrical tank, then about 30 seconds later it's happily swimming around. So, we killed them with our tanks. And then we put them into polyethylene tanks, polyethylene kills squid. In fact, we basically did everything wrong.
All of Steve's Architeuthis died.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: A couple of years it took me to get over that, having invested two years in something, and then to have someone throw a camera in front of you, when they've died, you feel pretty bad.
Took me two years to get over it. Then I pulled myself together again, and went and got this boat, and now spend a fantastic amount of time out at sea trying to catch that juvenile giant all over again. We're just going to dart straight over there. Now it will get a little bit stroppy in the middle of the harbour but we'll try and find some nice sheltered water for you. Here goes.
The money for Steve's big expeditions has now dried up, but he still spends about 300 days a year out on his boat, mostly alone, continuing his search for juvenile giant squid.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Well this is where I bust my foo-foo valve and I lift this big old net, the good old trusty net that's caught many a giant squid in its time, baby version.
Without a large research vessel, the chance of Steve catching a juvenile giant is pretty slim.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Now you're all hoping I've got a giant squid in here aren't you? I'm hoping I've still got the end of the net. And this is what you catch. Look at this, bloody jellyfish. I've never seen anything like this before.
Sometimes I put the net out, particularly at night, and it comes up glowing. It's really quite, when you're out here by yourself at night, quite romantic, you know - the net comes up glowing. Nobody there to appreciate it.
Nup, thought we had something. I'd like to be able to show you a live squid while we're out here, I'm supposed to be the squid hunter aren't I and I can't even catch one of the things. It's a bit embarrassing really. I often do think about chucking all of this in, and just sitting back in the office, doing my own research. But there's a lot of pressure on us to actually go out and catch this animal, and until someone else does it, I'm going to continue doing it myself. So no, I can't chuck it in just yet.
In the seven years Dr O'Shea's searched for the giant squid, he's become aware of a disturbing trend.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: Squid are incredibly good barometers of environmental health. If I go back maybe 10 years I had 23 giant squid in one year, that's how many were caught, that was the intensity of fishing around NZ, and then it tailed right down to one a year.
We sucked a kumara on that one I'm afraid. Ooh, aah, ain't no squid in there.
Dr O'Shea believes the decline in giant squid numbers is due to a new, aggressive form of deep-sea fishing practiced in New Zealand.
With the coastal seafood stocks exhausted, fishermen are turning to bottom trawling, where nets weighted with steel rollers are dragged along the deepest ocean floors.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: In the process of doing so they wipe out centuries-old coral communities, myriad other invertebrate bits and pieces, and exhausted the fish stocks. And what we've seen in New Zealand is that we've systematically trawled the sea floor everywhere, and now there are no fish left in New Zealand waters, so what we are doing is we are moving into international waters.
So, basically, between New Zealand and Australia, what we are left with on the sea floor, down to depths of about 1,200m, is a barren wasteland. This is so beautiful where we are now, but you think that the oceans are fine but they're not. There are no fish here at all, its been fished out we can't even catch a fish today.
Dr O'Shea is becoming increasingly worried that bottom trawling may cause the extinction of many deep sea creatures before we even know they exist.
DR STEVE O’SHEA: There are plenty of other things that we can focus our energies on that are probably far more important than catching and growing up giant squid. Conservation, first and foremost, is what I do do, and we just use the squid and the public's insatiable appetite to learn more about the squid as a hook to draw them into far more important matters like conservation because at the rate we're going we're not going to have giant squid in 10 years.
We have already had about five extinctions of squid and octopus in New Zealand waters already. That's a direct consequence of fishing activity. And these bloody great big nets are doing a very good job of wiping out the giant squid as well.
GEORGE NEGUS: Our giant squid man told Ben Deacon there's an even bigger and much meaner model out there called the colossal squid! And, at an international fisheries conference in Wellington, it was recently revealed that around a third of New Zealand's off-shore waters may soon be off-limits to the dreaded bottom trawlers.