Stuff of Sea Legends Surprises O.C. Men On Quest for Tuna

Atop the skiff The Water Rat, the two fishermen came upon one of Earth’s most alien and mythologized creatures, bobbing on the water and humbled by death.

Tuna fishermen Craig Ransom, 36, and Matt Mamede, 33, on Tuesday discovered the remains of a giant sea squid about seven miles off Dana Point. No giant squid has been found alive, but the two fishermen came upon this one no more than an hour after its death.

So fresh was the find that a razor-sharp sucker on one of the still-throbbing tentacles even gripped Mamede’s right hand as he and Ransom hauled the remains aboard.

Most of the creature’s head had been sheared off, Ransom said, possibly by a large mako shark.

A pack of sea gulls pecked at the corpse, which from a distance looked like a floating kelp bed, said Ransom, of Mission Viejo.

A long, grappling tentacle and four of the shorter arms still twitched. “We knew it was something you don’t see often,” Ransom said.

When the two men reached down to haul the squid into the boat, some of the suction cups reflexively latched onto the boat, and Mamede was cut by one of the sharp serrated rings that surround the cups.

“I saw all the suckers,” Mamede said, “but I didn’t know they had little razors on them.”

Once it was on board, the men measured the squid: 19 feet long from where the head once was to the end of the longest tentacle.

The largest dead giant squid ever found was about 60 feet long, but it is believed they can grow even larger. Their eyes can be as large as soccer balls, and they have parrot-like beaks that serve as a formidable weapons.

Devoid of the large head and four other arms, Tuesday’s 70 pounds of squid fit, coiled, into a cooler filled with ice.

Fishermen through and through, the men kept on fishing: The yellowfin tuna were too good that day, said Mamede, of San Clemente.

On Thursday morning, they took the squid’s refrigerated remains to the Ocean Institute in Dana Point.

Alive and whole, the sea creature may have been about 30 feet long, said Linda Blanchard, the laboratory director of the Ocean Institute. The facility is looking for an interested museum or research center to take and preserve the remains, Blanchard said.

No living giant squid has been sighted, and few have even been found dead. Their existence has spawned tales of bloodthirsty sea monsters from ancient Greek poet Homer’s time to Jules Verne’s underwater adventures.

They are known to inhabit the ocean’s impenetrable pitch-black depths. Artists have long depicted the sea beast grappling with the hungry sperm whales of “Moby Dick,” or enveloping large ships with trunk-like tentacles as waters churned beneath them.

Researchers at the Ocean Institute and the fishermen speculate that this week’s Hurricane Lane 550 miles off the coast may have inspired the movement of strange and relatively elusive sea animals to the area through ocean currents. The ocean is also producing seasonal food sources, attracting a slew of fantastic creatures eager to feed.

Giant manta rays, sea turtles and 700- to 900-pound mako sharks have been seen off the coast in greater numbers. But a giant squid--even a dead and decapitated one--is the rarest sight.

In fact, though a huge mako shark could be responsible for the giant squid’s death, sharks can’t venture too deep into the ocean--let alone to the more than 3,000-foot depths that squids call home. Moreover, the squid had no teeth marks, Blanchard said.

“We might never know what killed it,” she said.