Rare 10-Foot Giant Deep Sea Creature Washes Ashore, Video Goes Viral

Photos and videos of a giant deep sea creature that washed ashore on a beach in Japan have gone viral on social media.

The creature, said to be an ultra-rare squid, was found on the Ugu beach in Obama, Fukui Prefecture, on Wednesday.

According to local media reports, the creature measured 10-foot-long, and was stranded on the beach. A video of the cephalopod, which was alive when found, was shared by news agency AFP on Twitter on Friday. The video has since then received more than 208,000 views.

Japanese newspaper Mainichi reported the giant squid was spotted by a local resident at Ugu beach on April 20 on the Sea of Japan coast. Local officials said it was very unusual that the creature was alive when it was found.

The AFP video shows the cephalopod swimming in shallow waters as officials took measurements. Later, authorities transported the creature to Echizen Matsushima Aquarium in the prefectural city of Sakai.

While this was a rare sighting, previously in 2020, a giant squid washed up on a beach in South Africa. The giant squid was found stranded on the shores of Golden Mile Beach in Britannia Bay, about 90 miles northwest of Cape Town. The squid was still alive and spouting ink when it was discovered. Marine biologist Dr. Wayne Florence of the Iziko Museums of South Africa said at the time that such giant squids can be found at depths of 300 to 1,000 meters in all oceans, except at the poles.

In 2019, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed a squid about 10-12 feet long moving toward the camera. It was later revealed the squid was in the Gulf of Mexico.

Squids are the largest cephalopods known to date, and they might have up to 10 arms or eight arms and two tentacles, along with two fins. The tentacles are similar to those of other squids in that they contain suckers and sucker rings. These are used to capture prey such as fishes, crustaceans, and other cephalopods, according to Britannica.

Until 2001, researchers got to know about giant squids only from autopsy examinations of specimens floating at sea or washed onto beaches. However, this changed in 2012 when the first video footage of an adult giant squid in the wild was captured.