The New Hunt for the Colossal Squid

About this video

The deeper you go, the weirder it gets... Visit http://mercury.com to join over 200 thousand entrepreneurs who love Mercury. Gigantic, monstrous, beautiful creatures thrive in the cold dark depths of our oceans. Until now though, most of our discoveries have just required decades of work for the chance to just get… lucky. Now, there’s a NEW WAY to discover the animals hidden in the deepest oceans. And all you need is a drop of water… In this video, come with us as we dive into our deepest oceans. Together we’ll see what’s hiding there, explore how we discover new animals today, and reveal the shocking new tech that is unlocking a new age in deep ocean discovery. Huge if true! Mercury Note: Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC. Chapters 00:00 What did they find in the deep ocean? 03:16 What animals are hiding in the twilight zone? 05:29 How do we find giant monsters in the deep? 06:43 What else is still hiding in the abyss? 07:42: Why do they get so BIG? 10:20 What can a drop of water tell us? 11:28 How does eDNA work? 12:24 Can we find the colossal squid? 15:03 What about totally unknown species?? 16:19 What’s the new frontier of ocean discovery? 17:04 Why is this huge if true? 18:00 :) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ You can find me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/cleoabram On TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@cleoabram Or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/cleoabram Bio: Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, HUGE* If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked. Additional reading and watching: - NOAA's eDNA Fact Sheet: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/environmental-DNA-fact-sheet.pdf - Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute: https://www.mbari.org/know-your-ocean/what-is-environmental-dna-edna/ - How eDNA technology is changing the game for protecting ocean species: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/12/this-will-finally-lift-the-veil-how-edna-can-see-the-oceans-hidden-life - Tracking Down Ocean Species On the Go Using eDNA: https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/tracking-down-ocean-species-go-using-edna#:~:text=A%20drop%20of%20the%20prepared,previously%20run%20via%20the%20internet. - New DNA tool 'changes everything in marine science: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/edna-environmental-dna-counts-fish-changes-marine-science - DNA left by ocean animals provides rare glimpse of marine ecosystems, Stanford researchers say: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2017/06/dna-left-ocean-animals-provides-rare-glimpse-marine-ecosystem - Exploring Deepwater Ecosystems with eDNA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gSSLigCl8Y - eDNA in the Twilight zone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2djwE5-SG8 - eDNA: How Scientists See Hidden Animals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8m8SLQZX0Q - How we can detect pretty much anything: https://youtu.be/bdwU_ZPk1cY?si=CMe19bv49U2PcBrP - The Wild: Eily Andruszkiewicz Allan: The magic of eDNA https://www.kuow.org/stories/eily-andruszkiewicz-allan-the-magic-of-edna - NOAA's Ocean Omics: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/noaa-omics/ - Ocean Census: https://oceancensus.org/ - 1OceanFoundation: https://www.1ocean.org/news/the-untold-story-of-mediterranean-sea-through-environmental-dna - UNESCO: https://www.unesco.org/en/edna-expeditions - Minderoo OceanOmics Centre: https://www.minderoo.org/resources/oceanomics/ - WilderLab (where our test kit is from!): https://wilderlab.co/ Vox: https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/ Gear I use: Camera: Sony A7SIII Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox Follow along for more episodes of HUGE* If True: https://www.youtube.com/cleoabram?sub_confirmation=1 — Hey, welcome to the joke down low! What do you call a fish with no eye? A fsh. Find a way to use “fsh” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description :)

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Ready? Inside the stomach of a sperm whale, there's an alarming amount of colossal squid. And look at this thing. It's huge.

And scientists think something like 80% of a sperm whale's diet is this gigantic animal, which means there's got to be tons of them in the ocean, right? How hard could it be to find a live one in its natural habitat?

Based on what we know about sperm whales, we figure these colossal squid primarily live here, deep in the ocean. So, to get there, we'll need a special submersible. Down here, sunlight can't reach. But wait, all around us, there's snow for kilome in

every direction. There's nothing else. We strain our eyes to see. We're searching and searching because the ocean is so much bigger than most people think.

An adult colossal squid can be over 9 m long. But down here in our sub, it's like looking for a house fly in an arena with the lights off using only your phone's flashlight and the weather's bad. So yeah, it's not looking great for our expedition.

Hello. Fortunately, in 2025, 100 years after we first realized the colossal squid existed, we got incredibly lucky. Researchers caught this footage of a young one. An absolutely unbelievable find entirely by accident.

Just like this footage of an orfish or this genuinely terrifying footage of a big fin squid filmed by oil rig operators, we have evidence that gigantic, monstrous, beautiful, bizarre animals thrive in the cold depths of our oceans. But up until now, most of our discoveries have just

been right place, right time. But what if I told you there's another way to discover the giant animals in our deep sea and all we need is a drop of water. If you dive into the ocean searching for life, you

want to be prepared with the right tools. And that depends entirely on how deep you plan to go. For the first 30 m or so, you can use scuba gear to dive and look around.

There's plenty of light here, and we spent tons of time studying these places. But despite that easy access, we still keep finding new species all the time. Experienced divers can go way farther, all the way down

to about here. But they can't stay there long, so sometimes they leave experiments like these artificial reefs to pick up later. These were recovered in 2025 and unveiled around 20 entirely new species.

But the farther down we go, the harder it gets to explore. By the time you get here, the pressure would make it feel like your entire body is being squeezed. So scientists use specialized underwater robots.

Some work autonomously and then they store data or video that's then retrieved after the dive. Others are tethered to a ship and send back data almost instantaneously. These can even have sampling arms and they're equipped with

all these cool different sensors. But when you turn on the lights down here, the first thing that you see is pieces of scales and poop and dust and dead animals that drift down from the surface.

This is nicely called marine snow. It's a really important food source for the animals down here because sunlight struggles to reach this layer. We're not seeing much at this point, but the animals that we do see are so cool.

Lots of them are transparent or they glow in the dark. It's like a whole alien carnival happening down there. But scientists discovered that there's something very weird happening in this part of the ocean.

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