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A few days old (apologies if it's already been mentioned), but I thought this was cool.  A Japanese "research" ship managed to hook a live giant squid (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/12/22/giant.squid.ap/index.html).  Apparently it's the first time anyone's managed to actually get a giant squid on film while it was still alive.  It's pretty small (20 feet) but still... yow.

Very cool.

The coolness is slightly diminished by how much cooler it would have been if they'd managed to bring it home alive.   :-P

Interesting how that works.  A researcher finds and kills a giant squid and suddenly, well, they're probably not endangered after all.

Giant Squid steaks now in your grocers freezer.

edit:  Discovery Channel is going to be pissed.  They've spent a lot of money trying to get footage of giant squid the last couple of years.

Tentacle rape taken to new unprecedented level... film at 11.

I get the feeling the squid wouldn't be interested.  So many disappointed perverts.

It's akin to a problem we have with a lot of documentaries we watch. The scientists will go on about how we have to protect the environment/critter/landscape from mankind's interference...and then they go interfere with it.

Yeah, maybe.  But every now and then a Stingray fights back.

I thought Irwin was an ok chap, but I cheer for the animals. That huge shark scare, when sharks killed like ten people one year...and we kill millions of sharks. Go, sharks. Eat you some human. Of course, you won't find me dangling my bits in the ocean where carnivores are swimming around looking for dangly bits, because I'm not a fucking moron. Well, not in that way, at least.

The moronic is in being so afraid of them.  You are much more likely to be killed (not injured) in a car wreck driving to your vacation location than you are to be injured (not killed) by a shark. 

Quick stats:  US auto *deaths* are around 40,000/yr, for a population of around 300,000,000.  Worldwide unprovoked shark attacks are around 60/yr, with yearly deaths usually being counted on one hand.  That means around twice as many people die per day in the US in an auto accident than are injured by sharks worldwide in an entire year.

OK, I'll go on driving my car, and you can stand in the ocean and wave your dick around in front of a great white. Wish me luck.

Where did I say I was afraid of sharks? Thanks for the statistical post, as if it were actually a rebuttal to what I said in any way.

I said I was cheering for MORE SHARK ATTACKS because they AREN'T killing enough people.

Maybe we can get sharks to drive cars.

Why not? We already have cats that can drive.

They'll need freakin' lasers, though.

The giant squid need to be piloting spaceships. (http://www.vondanmcintyre.com/squids/Squidliography.html)

The amount of people who drive cars everyday don't spend equal time swimming through the ocean though.

Another Squiddy Related Link :

http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=91073406251 (http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=91073406251)

I never read any news website unless they provide page 3 Squid  :-P

The Japanese will probably turn it into sushi.  Squid sushi is pretty tasteless, though.  If you are into eating creatures illegally captured by Japanese whalers, takoyaki is where its at.

Didn't this already happen a while ago?  Or was that a different giant mollusk?

Very cool. I didn't think one would actually survive being brought up to the surface, considering how deep they live.

I've always wondered - did the legends of the Kraken come before or after the first time man accidently caught a Giant squid...

The things wash up on shore occasionally.  No one even had to go in the water for the legends to start.  If you spend most of your days fishing out of a small poorly built and leaky boat all it takes is one of these washing up on shore every couple of dozen years to feed all the legends and myths you could ever want.

Still pictures were taken of one at depth about a year ago or so, but not video. 

Wouldn't that make them octopoachers then?

I've always thought it was an ancient captain trying to explain losing a ship to the owning concerns. "Err...yeah...there was this GIANT SEA MONSTER...it came from the depths with Poseiden's wrath and snatched out ye ship from under us!"
I don't know about squid in particular, but cephalopods are very resistant to problems with pressure. There's some large octopus (octopi are my favorite sea creatures, not because of cthulhu ;)) off the coast of california that have been spotted near the surface and thousands of feet down a sea cliff at the bottom. They can equalize the pressure. That's pretty cool.