Giant Squid Crawls onto a Paddle Board in South Africa

 

A post shared by James Taylor (@ejamestaylor) on Jun 13, 2017 at 3:59am PDT

MELKBOSSTRAND, South Africa - What would you do if a Giant Squid started wrapping its tentacles around your paddle board like the Kraken? This video shows James Taylor handling it like a champ when an injured giant squid started wrapping itself around his Naish paddle board on the Melkbosstrand. The 41 year old South African had spotted the giant squid earlier, and was attempting to bring it to the shore.

Giant squid have eight arms and two longer feeding tentacles that help them bring their prey to their beaks. They feed on fish, shrimp, and other squid. There have been stories of them even attacking small whales and now Taylor’s Naish paddle board. “Spotted an injured giant squid just behind the waves in Melkboss a while back and decided to try and get it to the beach,” said Taylor on his Instagram post.

Even though the giant squid is the largest invertebrate on earth, details and habits of this creature remain largely a mystery. The largest of giant squid ever found measured 59 feet in length and weighed nearly a ton. “It was quite badly injured and barely alive when I caught it,” Taylor wrote on Facebook. “It didn’t even really try and get away, so we ended up putting it out of its misery when we got to the beach. It felt like the best thing to do at the time.”

Earth Touch News had reported that Taylor said the squid he found was missing some of its tentacles and covered in what appeared to be seal bite marks. The squid was not moving at all when Taylor first spotted it. Taylor concluded that the squid had swam to the surface to die. He attempted to beach it so researchers from a nearby aquarium may be able to retrieve it for research.

“It was unfortunately a holiday and they did not have any staff on call to drive through, so we dissected it and took a bunch of videos and photos that we later sent to them so that they could at least have a look at what we found,” said Taylor on Facebook. “They sent these onto a professor who has been studying giant squid in South Africa for the last 15 years and he was very excited about the find. He told me the next day that he has only seen five wash up on South African shores since he started his studies.”

“I like to see people concerned about the fate of the world,” Taylor said. “They’re upset that something got hurt and I was there for those last seconds, and I understand if they’re angry in a way.”

“I don’t like seeing things die. It’s not a nice thing.”

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