Leviathan!

A live, albeit dying (and now dead), colossal squid was inadvertently captured by fishermen in the chilly waters off Antartica. The New Zealand-based fishing vessel was out for Patagonian toothfish (which you and I know as Chilean sea bass and which are definitely not on the list of sustainable seafoods).

The tentacled leviathan, which measured well over 30 feet long and weighed nearly 1,000 pounds, took two hours to land. This was the first intact specimen of colossal squid ever caught. The species was first identified from the stomach contents of sperm whales.

In other squid-related news, Japanese scientists recently elucidated their discovery that large deep-sea squid employ bioluminescence in hunting and also (possibly) courtship. Best of all, they captured the light show on film.

The Japanese underwater discovery was made in the North Pacific. For anyone interested in learning more about the toothfish/sea bass fishery of the southern seas, I direct you to G. Bruce Knecht's highly praised tale, Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish. Tom Brokaw called Hooked "a global whodunit, a courtroom drama--and a critically important ecological message all rolled into one."