Mythical Giant Squid That Inspired the ‘Kraken’ Legend Spotted in US Waters

• The elusive creature was seen 100 miles southeast of New Orleans.
• The creature was at least 3 to 3.7 meters (10 to 12 feet long).
• Shortly after they saw the giant squid, the ship was struck by lightning.

The thought of giant squids lurking in deep, deep waters is enough to scare the wits out of anybody and most of us would rather wish it’s just the stuff of legends. But this recent footage of a humongous squid recently spotted in the Gulf of Mexico proves that these supposedly mythical creatures are definitely real.

Just recently, scientists encountered one of these elusive creatures 100 miles southeast of New Orleans. The team of researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were on their Journey Into Midnight expedition.

They soon identified it as having “an enormous set of arms and tentacles coming in to attack the e-jelly.”

They spent the last couple of weeks investigating the deepest areas of the Gulf of Mexico. They were gathering insight of the life conditions in these pitch-dark areas.

As they were looking at the videos captured by their stealth camera system, researcher Nathan Robinson saw something strange in the corner of the screen.

In a blog post that the researchers published, they disclosed that the creature was at least 3 to 3.7 meters (10 to 12 feet long) in length. After much discussion, the team concluded that what they saw was a juvenile giant squid.

What made the scenario even more exciting was that around 30 minutes after Robinson saw the squid on screen, the ship was struck by lightning.

The instrumentation antenna in the starboard was hit, but fortunately the computer and the captured footage remained intact.

The team said that the squid was found only after five deployments of the ship. Other remotely operated vehicles (ROVs0 and submersible dives in the gulf were not able to find one.

They concluded that the squid does not like the bright lights produced by the ROVs and that only because the ship used stealth monitoring that they were able to see the creature.

Most importantly, they also said that the fear for this giant squid may be unfounded.

“The giant squid is large and certainly unusual from our human perspective, but if the video shows anything of the animal’s character, it shows an animal surprised by its mistake, backing off after striking at something that at first must have seemed appealing but was obviously not food.”