Glacial Glass Squid Filmed for the First Time In This Beautiful Footage
The expedition, which took place over 35 days, had deep-sea expert named Dr. Thom Linley from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa along for the ride. As he was poring over the feed from the ROV making its way along the never-before-seen piece of seafloor, he spotted the glacial glass squid. At 2,254 feet deep, he was sure that he was the watching the first footage of a live specimen ever.
'In the footage,' a press release reads, 'the transparent G. glacialis positions its arms loosely above its head, similar to the cockatoo pose commonly observed in other glass squids… G. glacialis is a glass squid species that has never been seen alive in its natural environment before.'
Amazingly, the glacial glass squid wasn't the only first-ever footage the researchers managed to catch. They also filmed the very first footage of a colossal squid. It's a testament to just how much there is to learn about our planet.
'The first sighting of two different squids on back-to-back expeditions is remarkable and shows how little we have seen of the magnificent inhabitants of the Southern Ocean,' said Schmidt Ocean Institute's executive director, Dr. Jyotika Virmani. 'Fortunately, we caught enough high-resolution imagery of these creatures to allow the global experts, who were not on the vessel, to identify both species.'
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