Colossal squid
The largest recorded specimen was captured in 2007 by a New Zealand fishing boat off Antarctica. It was initially estimated to measure in length and weigh . The squid was taken back to New Zealand for scientific study. A study on the specimen later showed its actual weight was , but it only measured in total length as a result of the tentacles' shrinking "post mortem".
List of giant squid specimens and sightings (21st century)
Though the total number of recorded giant squid specimens now runs into the hundreds, the species remains notoriously elusive and little known. By the turn of the 21st century, the giant squid remained one of the few truly large extant megafauna to have never been photographed alive, either in the wild or in captivity. Marine writer and artist Richard Ellis described it as "the most elusive image in natural history" (Ellis, 1998a:211).
Early attempts to capture a glimpse of the animal in its natural habitat included a submersible expedition by Frederick Aldrich in the late 1980s (Ellis, 1998a:3; Lien, 2000:279). purporting to show a live "Architeuthis dux" alongside a diver was published by Poppe & Goto (1993), but this turned out to be a sick or dying "Onykia robusta" (misidentification #[7]; Ellis, 1998a:211; Norman, 2000:174). A number of expeditions were mounted in the 1990s with the aim of capturing footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat (Pope, 1994; Fisher, 1995; Judd, 1996; [Anonymous], 1996), but all were unsuccessful. They included Smithsonian-backed expeditions to the Azores in July 1996 and to Kaikoura Canyon off New Zealand in January–March 1997 and February–March 1999 (the former covered by National Geographic; Allen, 1997; McCarey & Rubin, 1998). These expeditions—the latter two each costing around $10 million—employed a combination of sperm whale-mounted crittercams, baited "ropecams" or "drop-cams", an "Odyssey IIB" autonomous underwater vehicle, and the single-person submersible "Deep Rover" (Fisher, 1997; Ellis, 1997a; Grzelewski, 2002). All three were led by giant squid expert Clyde Roper, with the first two also involving marine biologist Malcolm Clarke (Gomes-Pereira "et al.", 2017:823) and the last two Steve O'Shea of NIWA (Roper "et al.", 1997, 1999; Roper, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2006, 2013). Richard Ellis took part in the first of the New Zealand expeditions and in 1998 released a popular nonfiction book, "The Search for the Giant Squid", further raising interest in the pursuit of a live animal (Miller, 1996; Ellis, 1998a). Oceanographic explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, led another unsuccessful expedition to New Zealand that ended in early 2001 ([Anonymous], 2001b).