00:00Hashtag the colossal squid, why humans have never seen one alive hashtag hashtag English script for
00:04daily motion, 800 words, 7 minute reading, scene, deep ocean, dark silhouette, let me tell you one
00:10of the most bizarre facts in marine biology. The colossal squid, Mesonychotuthis hamiltoni,
00:15is the largest invertebrate on earth. It grows as long as a school bus. And there are millions
00:20of them swimming in the southern ocean around Antarctica right now. But here's the thing,
00:24humans have never filmed a single living adult, not one. Ever. Millions of them.
00:30Each one massive. And we simply cannot find them. Why?
00:34Scene, submarine with bright white lights, the deep ocean has no light. Zero.
00:39When we go down there, we bring truckloads of blinding white floodlights.
00:43This animal has eyes the size of basketballs, the largest eyes of any creature on earth.
00:48They evolved for millions. Of years in complete darkness.
00:52Then we shine a searchlight in their face. 99% of deep sea creatures instantly flee.
00:57For over a hundred years, we've been looking for them the wrong way.
01:01They're not rare. We've just been scaring them away.
01:05Scene, sperm whale swimming, so how do scientists know there are millions?
01:09Sperm whales. These deep ocean hunters dive over a kilometer down to hunt squid.
01:13When scientists dissected the stomachs of Antarctic sperm whales, they found something astonishing,
01:1877% of the squid biomass was colossal squid. Not occasionally.
01:23Dumb it, scientists calculated backward, to support that many sperm whales,
01:27there must be at least tens of millions of colossal squid in the Antarctic deep.
01:30The ocean floor down there is probably crawling with bus-sized monsters.
01:34We just can't see them because we keep spooking them.
01:37Scene, research paper, retinal damage imagery, and the consequences of this are worse than you.
01:42Think. Below 200 meters, there's no sunlight.
01:46Deep sea animals have all dyes too to detect the faintest bioluminescent glow, nothing more.
01:51Many don't even have irises. They don't need them.
01:55Then we showed up.
01:56A 1998 study found that intense artificial light can cause permanent damage to deep sea animals' visual systems.
02:02Not a scare, their eyes literally break.
02:05In 2021, an experiment measured how far animals flee from white light.
02:09The answer, about the length of a football field.
02:12In some areas, species diversity dropped 99% the moment the lights turned on.
02:17Imagine crashing a firetruck into a pitch black room, sirens blaring, lights blazing, then wondering why nobody's there.
02:23Scene, red light versus white light test footage, here's the most direct demonstration.
02:27Scientists tried filming a viperfish, one of the ocean's fiercest predators, with white light.
02:31The fish practically exploded out of the frame.
02:34Same fish.
02:36Same depth.
02:37But with infrared light instead.
02:39It swam calmly toward the camera, circled the lens twice.
02:43Completely unfazed.
02:45The only thing that changed was the color of the light.
02:47Which means almost all the deep sea behavioral data we've collected might be fundamentally wrong.
02:52We've been studying animals that are terrified and injured.
02:55We just never had anything to compare it to.
02:57Scene, Edith Witter, jellyfish footage,
02:59So what did the scientist who finally solved this do right?
03:02Her name is Edith Witter.
03:04Over 40 years studying the deep ocean.
03:07One of the world's top experts in bioluminescence.
03:10She understood something crucial, 76% of deep sea creatures produce their own light.
03:14This isn't decoration, it's their language.
03:17The entire deep ocean is a world of silent light based conversation.
03:21Humans went down there not listening, we were screaming at everyone.
03:24Witter did the opposite.
03:26She built something called an D-jelly.
03:28An electronic jellyfish.
03:30Here's the trick, certain deep sea jellyfish, when attacked, flash a specific bioluminescent distress signal, like a car alarm going
03:37off.
03:37The flash attracts an even bigger predator to eat whatever's attacking the jellyfish, letting it escape in the chaos.
03:43Witter recreated this signal with a ring of blue LEDs, paired with a camera that only shoots in red light,
03:48which is nearly invisible to deep sea animals since their eyes evolved for blue-green bioluminescence.
03:52The entire wave was essentially invisible in the deep.
03:55No disturbance.
03:57No fear.
03:58Speaking the ocean's own language.
04:01Scene, the 86-second encounter, that 86-second footage of a giant squid.
04:05That's how they got it.
04:07But the story gets even better.
04:09Witter built an upgraded version called, Medusa.
04:11In 2020, she deployed it off Japan at 600 meters deep, targeting giant squid, the smaller, more famous cousin of
04:18the colossal squid.
04:19First deployment.
04:21The E-jelly flashed its distress call.
04:23Total darkness.
04:25And the giant squid appeared.
04:26For the first time in human history, a living giant squid was filmed in its natural habitat, an animal that
04:31had dodged every submarine, every troll net, over a century of expeditions, finally showed itself after we learned to shut
04:37up and listen.
04:37In 2019, her team did it again in the Gulf of Mexico.
04:41This isn't luck.
04:43This is finally using the right approach.
04:46Scene, mesopelagic zone diagram, and here's the part that still blows my mind.
04:50Between the surface and the seafloor, there's a zone called the mesopelagic, about 200 to 1,000 meters deep.
04:56Scientists always thought it was a cold, dark transition zone with nothing much in it.
05:00In 2014, a team used acoustic data to measure the actual biomass.
05:05They found it had been underestimated by at least.
05:0810 times asterisk asterisk.
05:10Not 10%.
05:1110 times, the mesopelagic zone alone may contain more fish than the rest of the ocean combined.
05:16Why were we so wrong?
05:18Because for over a century, we used troll nets to sample, nets that only catch the slow, the sick, and
05:23the stupid.
05:24The healthy ones were already long gone.
05:27Scene, giant siphonophore, alien-like life form, there's even something called a siphonophore, a single living organism longer than a
05:33blue whale, but not one animal.
05:35It's thousands of cloned individuals, each with a specialized job.
05:39Some eat.
05:40Some move.
05:41Some reproduce.
05:43Like a corporation made of jelly.
05:45The first time it was filmed in 2020 off Western Australia, everyone watching just stared.
05:50A creature longer than the largest animal on Earth, floating silently in the dark.
05:54We had no idea it existed.
05:56Scene, closing, hopeful tone, deep ocean, so why hasn't anyone used?
06:01The right method to find the colossal squid?
06:03The honest answer is logistics.
06:05The Southern Ocean is the most remote, most hostile stretch of water on Earth.
06:09A research ship costs tens of thousands of dollars per day.
06:1330-foot waves.
06:15Hurricane force winds.
06:16Legitimate attempts have been crushed by weather and logistics.
06:19But here's what gives me hope.
06:21Almost every major deep sea discovery wasn't made with the most expensive gear or the biggest budget.
06:26Edith Witter's breakthrough was a ring of blue LEDs and a red light camera.
06:30Not high tech.
06:31But she did one thing right, she learned to knock using the ocean's own language.
06:36The right tool.
06:37The right place.
06:38And then patiently waiting.
06:40The colossal squid is out there.
06:42Tens of millions of them.
06:44Bus-sized.
06:45With the largest eyes of any creature on Earth.
06:48They've been living in total darkness for hundreds of millions of years.
06:52We've never
06:53Seen them, not because they're good at hiding, but because every time we visit, we set off fireworks on their
06:58doorstep.
06:59Maybe one day, we'll learn to knock quietly.
07:01Until then, they're down there under the Antarctic ice, living unhurried lives in the darkness, just as they have for
07:07eons.
07:07Not needing to be found.
07:09Not caring whether we come at all.
