A group of tourists were astonished by a giant squid that washed up on a New Zealand beach. The chance finding was described by the tour guide as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
On the beach at Farewell Spit, a nature reserve in the north of South Island, a 13-foot (4 meter) long giant squid was found. A tour group was quickly notified of the remains, which were half buried in sand, after a lone guide from the nature tour agency discovered them. After examining the squid's corpse, the group took pictures next to the rare remains.
"It's not a common find on any beach, so if you're able to be there at the right time, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said the guide. He said it was sobering to see a large sea creature dead on the land.
Giant squids can measure up to 43 feet (13 m) long, making them the second largest squids in the ocean. The giant sea creature known as the "Kraken," which is thought to be the real-life inspiration for the massive mythical sea creature, live in deep water more than 2,950 feet below the surface.
A sperm whale is on a beach in Australia.
It's not clear how long the dead squid's entire body took to measure because most of its tentacles were incomplete or buried under the sand.
"It looked like it had been eaten by some other sea creature, such as a shark or fish," Donaldson said. I think it had been floating in the water for a while and washed up.
According to The New Zealand Herald, the Department ofConservation will attempt to retrieve the squid's remains so they can be studied.
Seeing a giant squid up close may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most people, but this isn't the first time that remains of the deep-sea giants have beached on the shore. In the last 30 years, at least six giant squids have washed up on the beaches of the nature reserve.
A tour group came across a fully intact giant squid at the same part of the beach in 2019.
There are dead giant squids washing up on the shore in South Africa. A 14-foot-long squid was found on a beach in Cape Town in August.
It was originally published on Live Science
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