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Writer's pictureFada Vieira Chaib

BigFin Squid


BigFin Squids (Magnapinna Squid), are long squids that live very deep in the sea, and depending on the photography/video it can look like a beautiful sea creature that swims gracefully, or a spooky sea E.T. As most deep living sea creatures we don’t know many things about them, but the facts we do know, I will tell you in this article.

BigFin was previously found in the Atlantic, Indian, and the Great Caribbean, but it also has been found in Australia (in the Pacific Ocean) and the Gulf of Mexico near Texas. The records we have of Bigfin were found in different depths, all of them being deeper than a thousand meters. The deepest territory recorded is 4,735 m (~15535 ft) in the western Atlantic off the coast of Brazil. Magnapinna Squids live in temperate to tropical latitudes of the world.

They have large fins (their popular name isn’t bigfin squid for no reason) in a heart shape, They swim by flapping their fins. They have ten long arms that first start in a right angle out, making an impression of elbows, then they fall parallel, and at the end of it, they have microscopic suckers. Which is different from other squids that have eight short arms and two long tentacles. Their central body is very small and their tentacles are 15-20 times the length of it, their whole body may reach 7 or 8 m (23 - 26 ft). They are brownish and the filaments are white or comparatively lighter in color.

We don’t have much research about what they eat and how, but we do have some assumptions. For example, microscopic suckers may be used to capture zooplanktons. Some researchers assume that the very long legs can pick up or capture organisms that they can eat. Or stay still and wait for another organism to pass by and enter their range.

From the eleven specimens we recorded, three different species have been identified, and there is a consideration of maybe four. In those differences that make them different species are the two types of arms noticed, the proximal arm that is short with large suckers, and has two to four series of them, and the distal arm that is long and covered by small suckers, and have an irregular series of arms.




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