The Kraken Wakes
Guest Post by Chris Flynn
October 13
During a recent interview conducted for The Big Issue with China Miéville about his new book, Kraken, we got to talking about Dr Steve O’Shea, Director of the Earth and Oceanic Sciences Research Institute at the Auckland University of Technology. O’Shea is a marine biologist and environmentalist best known for his research on the giant squid, or Architeuthis Dux, which is the lynchpin of Miéville’s latest novel. In Kraken, a giant squid that has been preserved in London’s Natural History Museum is stolen, resulting in a sometimes terrifying, often hilarious madcap pursuit that drags every weird, magical and criminal character in London into an ever-spiralling net of confusion. It’s a rollicking read and totally different from his previous Hugo-winning The City and the City (he had just won the award the night before the interview, jointly with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl).
As soon as I mentioned O’Shea’s research into the colossal squid, a beast that dwarfs the giant squid, Miéville rattled off its Latin name without a moment’s hesitation – Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni. Try saying that with a mouthful of calamari. This is where O’Shea and Miéville have a point of difference. According to O’Shea the giant squid is a passive predator, outclassed by the ferocity of its colossal relative. He is also rather dismissive of the Humboldt squid, which Miéville tells me hunt in vicious packs. One will lure the prey by causing its body to flash different colours then once it has said fishy or curious bather in its suckers, the others swarm in to feed. Nicknamed ‘El Diablo Rojo’, these raptors of the sea are evidently not to be trifled with.
In 2003 Brent Hoff interviewed O’Shea and his research associate Kat Bolstad for McSweeney’s issue 11. In his preface to the interview Hoff provided an excellent giant squid timeline to illustrate the history of squid lore. The idea of a sea monster with multiple arms apparently dates from 1755, when Norwegian bishop Erik Pontoppidan documented sightings of a ‘kraken’ that had attacked fishermen. Such a beast was indelibly imprinted on the popular consciousness 115 years later by Jules Verne, when a 25 foot squid attacked the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Since then, everyone has been looking for these fabled creatures of the deep.
For a long time few believed life could exist in the depths of the ocean, given the enormous pressures, absence of light and scarcity of food sources. In 1960, US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard descended 38,500 feet in a bathysphere to the murky depths of the Marianas Trench, supposedly the deepest spot on Earth. Just before they hit bottom a large unidentifiable creature passed by the window, lending credence to the existence of leviathans.
In the post-Jaws frenzy, even Arthur C. Clarke briefly got in on the act. Riding on the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey the producers of Jaws asked him to pen a screenplay for the sequel but instead of another Amity Island teenage munch fest, Clarke wrote an outline for a giant squid film entitled Architeuthis. Sadly this never saw the light of day. Now of course the existence of Architeuthis Dux and Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni are confirmed, though sightings of live specimens are extremely rare and often spurious.
No one had seen a colossal squid up close until 2003, when a New Zealand fishing trawler captured one they had witnessed attacking a six-foot long Patagonian tooth-fish. In addition to the usual suckers, along this creature’s tentacles were two rows of two-inch long hooks, which rotated through 360 degrees, enabling the squid to tear its prey asunder. O’Shea and Bolstad were the first scientists to examine the creature, and dubbed it the Colossal Squid.
The actual size of giant and colossal squid is often misreported and exaggerated, but it is generally agreed that female Architeuthis can reach up to 13 metres in length, when measured from the caudal fin to the tip of the longest tentacles. Males are always several metres shorter. At 14 metres the Colossal Squid is the largest known invertebrate in the world and possesses the biggest eyes in the animal kingdom.
The giant squid in Miéville’s book, dubbed ‘Archie’, is real. Measuring 8.62 metres in length, he was caught off the coast of the Falkland Islands in 2004 and sent to the Natural History Museum in London for preservation, finally going on display in 2006. Although Miéville never saw it, another giant squid was displayed in Melbourne Aquarium in 2006, preserved in a block of ice. Intact specimens such as these are extremely rare, with most decomposed giant squid carcasses washed up on beaches or found in the bellies of whales.
Live footage of the giant squid in its natural habitat has only been captured recently. In 2004 teams from the National Science Museum of Japan and the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association took startling photographs of an 8 metre giant squid aggressively attacking their lure, leaving behind a five and a half metre tentacle. This was the first time a giant squid had been seen hunting in the wild. Video of a much smaller 3.5 metre squid was recorded in late 2006 in the same location.
Despite the lack of evidence, O’Shea is convinced the colossal squid could be a much more dangerous predator than its giant relative. ‘That’s our theory, and it is common sense, having looked at the arsenal of hooks and general body construction. This is one animal that does not sit down over a cuppa plankton exchanging idle chitchat.’
Miéville remains unconvinced: ‘There is this whole kind of trash talk going on between partisans of the colossal versus the giant squid, with the giant squid being appallingly traduced. I’d like to meet Steve O’Shea at some point. I actually reference him in Kraken in a slightly cheesy dissing way. I should send him a copy.’
Before my eyes was a horrible monster, worthy to figure in the legends of the marvelous. It was an immense cuttle-fish, being eight yards long. It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes. Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the Furies’ hair. One could see the 250 air holes on the inner side of the tentacles. The monster’s mouth, a horned beak like a parrot’s, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with several rows of pointed teeth, came out quivering from this veritable pair of shears.’
—Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Cross-posted from Fly the Falcon
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