Edith Widder: How we found the giant squidIn today’s talk, Widder shares how we now have filmed proof of the giant squid’s existence, thanks to a mission conducted by herself, Tsunemi Kubodera and Steve O’Shea and financed by the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, NHK. While many previous missions failed to capture evidence of the giant squid, Widder and her fellow scientists used novel approaches — a camera platform that moves silently through the ocean, a bioluminescent electronic jellyfish to attract large sea creatures and a submersible able to take high definition footage from afar — to give us a glimpse of this mythical creature. In fact, they filmed it in action multiple times.

“How could something so big live in our ocean and remain unfilmed until now?” asks Widder on the TED2013 stage. “We’ve only explored about 5% of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there — fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways we can’t even imagine. Yet, we’ve spent only a tiny fraction of the money on ocean exploration that we’ve spent on space exploration.“

To see the giant squid for yourself, and to watch footage of the crew as they caught their first glimpses of it, watch this talk — a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Discovery Channel documentary, Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real. And here, more talks on incredible oceanic creatures:

• Mike deGruy: Hooked by an octopus
• Tierney Thys swims with the giant sunfish
• Edith Widder: The weird, wonderful world of bioluminscence
• David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
• Brian Skerry reveals ocean’s glory — and horror
• Jim Toomey: Learning from Sherman the shark
• Margaret Wertheim: the beautiful math of coral
• Edith Widder: Glowing life in an underwater world
• Asha de Vos: Why are blue whales so enormous?

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

There are giants in the ocean, and we can prove it, begins marine biologist Edie Widder on stage at TED. Widder first became involved with TED when she gave a talk on life in the underwater world at Mission Blue in 2010, as part of Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize wish. There she met the late legendary filmmaker Mike DeGruy, who told Widder about his hunt for the giant squid. This piqued Widder’s interest, and thus began her newest journey.

Widder suspected that the reason it was so hard to find the giant squid was the vehicles that were typically being used to hunt them. Common remotely operated underwater vehicles, or ROVs, were simply too loud, and likely scaring a lot of animals away. Widder and her team developed Medusa, a camera platform attached to an optical lure that could be dragged along silently without a thruster or motor. The lure is unobtrusive and uses red light, which is invisible to undersea creatures, much like infrared above water. The light that is visible is a tiny blue light, like an electronic jellyfish.

In the wild, jellyfish use bioluminescence when they are under attack, in order to lure even larger attackers to attack their attackers, as a last-ditch attempt before they are eaten. Widder’s “e-jelly” imitates this phenomenon in hopes of luring a giant squid and capturing it on camera. Well, it worked! Widder and her team managed six sightings of the giant squid, which when laid out can be as tall as a two-story house. Just last month the world saw footage of the giant squid for the first time in the Discovery Channel documentary Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real.

Only 5 percent of the ocean has been explored. What else is out there? As Widder urges us, we should turn our attention toward exploring all the truly remarkable — insanely large and weird! — corners and creatures beneath the sea.