Sea Monsters: Search for the Giant Squid Page #3

After investigating the sub for

five suspenseful minutes,

the giant went way,

leaving observing scientists excited

- and a bit relieved.

Once dismissed as mere

sensationalism,

the search for the giant squid

continues to gain impressive

proponents today.

One is Dr. Malcolm Clarke,

a specialist in sperm whales

and oceanic squid.

"I think the good has always

got to have a balance of evil.

You, you see the beauty in,

in the sea.

Many of, uh, the fish are

very beautiful

to look at, uh, and, uh, have

wonderful silvery sides,

they make pretty lights.

Uh, that's the beauty -

you need a few big-teethed,

big stomached monsters to go

along with it.

As a young graduate student,

Malcolm Clarke conducted research

aboard a factory ship

that hunted sperm whales -

once considered sea monsters,

in their own right.

Little was known about sperm

whale biology

despite centuries of killing them.

Only dwindling populations put

scientists aboard whaling boats

to study the huge animals.

Clarke inspected hundreds

of sperm whale stomachs.

One thing he found were the beaks

of deep-sea squid,

too tough to be digested.

This proved that squid are the sperm

whale's primary source of food.

And Clarke amassed a huge

collection of beaks -

as many as eighteen thousand

from a single whale.

Among them, are many beaks

of the giant squid.

"This came from a giant squid

that was taken from the stomach of

a sperm whale caught in the Azores.

Uh, so that, uh, it wasn't a

tremendously large one.

It was probably, uh, thirty, in

excess of thirty feet in length.

So it was quite a big squid, but,

um, not one of the biggest.

Uh, but certainly, it's got

very, very powerful jaws.

So that this is very,

very formidable.

And, uh, of course, if they did live

anywhere where a man lived, eh,

they would make mincemeat

of him in no time.

On a remote shore in New Zealand,

sperm whales have stranded.

What causes whales to strand

is still a mystery.

Clyde Roper and Malcolm Clarke

undertake the grim task

of examining the carcasses

and discover evidence of their

common passion, the giant squid.

The skins of sperm whales are like

weathered maps of ancient battles.

The circular scars were left by

sharp-toothed suckers of giant squid,

marking their last desperate

struggles

in the jaws of the Leviathan.

"They have fifty teeth.

These are in a, uh, form two rows

in the lower jaw.

They don't have any upper

teeth usually.

Uh, but the jaw is very, very narrow.

It can be about fifteen feet long

and, uh, be a foot across.

So, it's very, very long and narrow.

Uh, and it's a snapping jaw, it's

rather like some of the crocodiles.

It can probably, uh, snap shut

very rapidly

and they snap this jaw against

the upper jaw.

Bang!

And, in that movement,

they squeeze the squid

and it doesn't matter that the

teeth don't damage them much;

the squid will virtually

go paralyzed.

They, they don't like being

squeezed, squids don't -

It's one of their features -

not like humans.

And, uh, if they're squeezed

by the jaws, with these teeth,

and there's a big, very powerful

tongue right at back of the jaws to,

to push it down the throat.

Experts on both whale and squid,

Clarke and Roper are uniquely

to execute a new strategy

in the search of Arthieuthis.

"Whales were known to feed on squid

right from the very beginning,

in the earliest days of, uh,

of the whale hunting expeditions,

and some of those

were actually giant squid.

So it made sense to me to try to use

the sperm whale as our 'hound dog'

to, to lead us to, to the giant squid

and that quest has brought on

this current expedition."

Off the Azores,

Roper and Clarke help to deploy a

hydrophone to listen for sperm whales.

They, and the other scientists on this expedition,

are combining their search for

the giant squid

with research on

the squid's most formidable enemy.

Hydrophones can detect the sounds of

sperm whales from several miles away

- long before they can be

spotted visually.

But the whales themselves

have excellent hearing

and often keep their distance

from boats.

Today, the scientists are in luck.

The whales are feeling sociable.

A group of sperm whales

is playing nearby.

Female and their young

come to feed here

in the warm waters of the mid-Atlantic

and announce their presence

with an excited chorus of sounds.

"Good grief!

It is an audience clapping.

And they're clapping at us.

When sperm whales gather,

this is anything but 'a silent world'.

A distinct series of clicks is called

a "coda" used for communication.

Deciphering the sounds is a challenge

for behavioral experts like

Cornell University's Kurt Fristrup.

"Now that's one of the unknowns.

That could very well be used

for echo-raging, sonar."

Sometimes divers can get very close

to sperm whales.

It's a tremendous thrill

to be kindly received

by the most powerful predators

on earth.

Up close,

a different sound is sometimes heard.

This loud and singular noise

could be a warming

or even a weapon

- loud enough to stun a whale's prey.

The sperm whale's head is

fully one third of its total weight

and most of it is nose

- the largest in the animal kingdom.

This is where the sounds are created.

They're generated

in the front of the nose,

then redirected as they resound

powerful off the whale's skull.

No one knows exactly how.

This remarkable organ also holds

tons of spermaceti oil.

By regulating its temperature,

the whale may be able

to control their buoyancy.

This would allow them

to conserve energy

on their long dives to hunt for squid.

In any case,

the whales seem in perfect control

when they sleep

- suspended virtually

just below the waves and swells.

This remarkable behavior has only

recently been reported and filmed.

Mother sperm whales are

doting parents.

Their calves are slow to mature.

They stay in close contact

with their mothers,

but their ability to dive is limited.

A mature female needs more than

half a ton of food a day...

and her food source

- large oceanic squid-

may be thousands of feet below.

So she must leave her calf

at the surface

- sometimes for almost an hour.

The calves are

incredibly trusting and playful

and will often approach

and even nuzzle a diver.

This one offers its mouth

for inspection.

The mother can go down

more than half a mile

- a plunge deep into the unknown.

"We really don't know

how sperm whales locate their prey,

how they hunt,

how they locate their prey

and how they actually

consume their prey.

There are several hypotheses:

one is that they use echolocation

and get the signals back that way...

Somehow sperm whales "see" the world

around them

through a panorama

of reflected sounds.

This certainly helps them

navigate underwater,

but can they detect and catch

soft-bodied squids?

The scientists seek

another explanation.

"They can use the,

their eyes to see the bioluminescence

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