Though Architeuthis no longer qualifies as a Cryptid, having been videoed in its deep ocean environment, and now found washed ashore on a beach in Spain, it still gives hope to all those other cryptids out there on the waiting lists of discovery. Granted, you will find few if any better places to live in hiding than deep ocean trenches.

From LiveScience.Com

Elusive Giant Squid Washes Up on Spanish Beach
By Jeanna Bryner, Managing Editor October 04, 2013

This giant squid called Architeuthis dux and measuring 30 feet long washed ashore in the Spanish community of Cantabria on Oct. 1, 2013.
Credit: Enrique Talledo, www.enriquetalledo.com
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A giant squid, whose oversized eyes and gargantuan blob of a body make it look more mythical than real beast, washed ashore Tuesday (Oct. 1) at La Arena beach in the Spanish community of Cantabria.

The beast measures some 30 feet (9 meters) in length and weighs a whopping 400 pounds (180 kilograms); and according to news reports, it is a specimen of Architeuthis dux, the largest invertebrate (animals without backbones) on Earth.

Credit: El Diario Montanes, Video Screengrab View full size image

Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan’s National Science Museum in Tokyo, and his colleagues, captured the first live footage of an Architeuthis giant squid in its natural  habitat in 2012. The video revealed the elusive creature off the Ogasawara Islands, about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Tokyo at a depth of around 2,066 feet (630 m); the three-man crew aboard a submersible followed the giant squid down to 2,950 feet (900 m). [See Amazing Photos of Giant Squid]

Deep ocean creatures are rarely found at the surface and this does make me wonder what is causing the change in behavior. My paranoid side that has watched too many 1950’s SciFi B-movies says it is environmental changes, or radiation (even though Fukushima is in the Pacific and this is the Atlantic) still, something brought this creature near enough to be washed ashore.

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