The first ever video footage of a giant squid swimming in the
ocean depths is "an enormous breakthrough," according to a
prominent marine conservationist who wrote a book about the
quest to find the mysterious creatures. "People have been
searching for them for hundreds of years, literally," said
Richard Ellis, the author of "The Search for the Giant Squid:
The Biology and Mythology of the World's Most Elusive Sea
Creature." Scientists and television broadcasters released
images this week of the 10-foot-long giant squid they had filmed
deep in the Pacific Ocean, far off the coast of the Japanese
mainland, during hundreds of hours of underwater research. The
discovery is significant for both science and mythology, in
which giant squids have long played a notable role, Ellis said
in an interview on CNN. "We're going to learn how this thing
moves," he said. "How it swims, what it does with its arms when
it swims." He described the squid as having eight arms and "two
very, very long tentacles which it uses to gra